Students share secrets of stress management

     With homework, classwork, relationships and jobs clashing for time and attention, many students are turning to University Counseling Services to help  them manage their commitments. And the Counseling Center is ready for a mass of new students seeking aid.
     Freshmen experience many changes when they come to college.  According to Guidance Counselor Stephen Wilson, the beginning of the school year is one of the two highest stress times during the semester.
     “In high school, students often have a lot of people trying to help manage their time for them,” Wilson said. “In college, you don’t have so much of that.”
     Some freshmen find themselves unprepared with the new freedom offered by college life.  Junior English major Tim Sailor admits he was not prepared for all the freedom.
     “I skipped a lot of classes that first semester,” he said.
Aaron Adams, a junior chemistry major, did not handle his new freedom as well as he would have liked.
     “I didn’t take school too terribly seriously,” Adams said.
Freshman General Business major Michael Toomey feels that it is easier for him to manage his time when he has earlier classes.
     “There’s a lot of time during the day and most social stuff is at night,” Toomey said. “I find it easy to do some schoolwork in the afternoon while everyone else is at class.”
     To manage time efficiently, Sailor works on staying calm and relaxed to lower his stress. Adams makes a daily schedule to help him fit in everything.
     “I’m a lot less stressed if I have a schedule I can stick to and incorporate everything onto the schedule including times to be social, times to study, times to workout, times to sleep,” Adams said.
     Apart from making daily schedules, Wilson feels identifying personal values helps students make daily decisions.
     “Whatever it is that is an important value to you, make time for those things to be in your life,” he said. “There are things in life that may be urgent but not necessarily important,” Wilson said.
     If making schedules and identifying values does not help, a change in lifestyle might. Senior exercise science major Brooks Vinson prefers exercise and sleep to help him live a “less stress” filled life.
     “(Exercise) releases endorphins making things less stressful,” Vinson said.
     For professional help with all stress needs, GCSU provides a full range of counseling services including one-on-one and group counseling.
     Counselors often visit freshman seminar classes to give presentations on how to manage time and stress. The Counseling Center is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and encourages dorm residents to contact their resident director or resident assistant if there is an emergency during after hours.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 6 2007. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry