It shouldn’t come as a surprise that often times in college, trying to balance classes and extracurriculars can cause you to stress out. With 20 credits and countless clubs and organizations to juggle, college often feels like a constantly losing battle. With midterms and papers piling on top of me, I decided to try out meditation as a tool for dealing with my stress, and here’s my journal of what happened.
Day 1: Monday
Today, I woke up around 9 and downloaded Simple Habit, a meditation app. I figured that if I’m going to try meditation without any prior experience I would most likely need some amount of assistance. After opening the app, it prompted me to personalize my experience and describe what I might need the app for, to which I responded “reduce stress”. For this, it recommended a basic habit starter, which was just 5 minutes of meditation. The voice of a man spoke about how these 5 minutes of meditation were where I should be, and that my worries were another world away. After 5 minutes of his occasional reminders to keep breathing and revel in the “silence,” I opened my eyes and was honestly confused. That was it? I still have a 10 page paper due tonight. Why didn’t that stress go away? Did I do it wrong?
Photo courtesy of yogajournal.com.
Day 2: Tuesday
I decided to try the app again on the off chance that I didn’t do it right the first time. I did another 5 minutes of “mindfulness,” and tried to put my stress in another place and “simply focus on the moment,” just like the guy from the app said to do. While it was an improvement from yesterday, the second that the five minutes were over, all my stress immediately came rushing back.
Photo courtesy of yogajournal.com.
Day 3: Wednesday
Another 5 minutes today proved to actually be helpful in putting off my stress. After having meditated for 5 minutes, my stress was noticeably reduced. However by a few hours later, the stress of looming papers and exams slowly crept up on me.
Photo courtesy of yogajournal.com.
Day 4: Thursday
Once again, I woke up and did another five minutes of meditation. With a midterm this afternoon, I figured that 5 minutes of not cramming would actually be helpful. The 5 minutes of silence cleared my head and allowed me to focus on my class material.
Photo courtesy of yogajournal.com.
Day 5: Friday
With it being Friday, most of my stress from the weekdays was gone, but I still looked forward to my few minutes of silence. These few minutes allowed me an escape from the busyness of campus and classes.
Photo courtesy of yogajournal.com.
Overall, my experience with meditation showed me that it’s definitely worth a shot. While I probably won’t always be able to make time for it every day, meditation showed me that having an outlet that allows you to get away from the stress of school for even a few minutes is a complete game-changer.