October is a fabulous month to be a college student—it’s still too early in the semester to be all that far behind in your reading, Homecoming weekend is Ivy League Christmas, and Halloween is just close enough to promote weeks of costume perfecting. But then a massive paper pops up like a manhole in your previously blissful path from tailgating to trick-or-treating. Midterms are sneaky and always manage to plague the entire month of October, rudely replacing an apple picking outing with panicked nights in Butler and five-coffee-a-day marathons in a perma-uniform of sweats and glasses. With these five stress busters, you can (and will!) get through those overwhelming moments when dropping out seems way more appealing than that cumulative International Politics exam looming over your weekend. Take a deep breath, try to relax even just a little, and it will be Halloweekend followed by a well-deserved Fall break in no time at all!
1. Go to the Gym
I promise you, this is not some clichéd, “if I lose three pounds my midterm will go away” kind of tip. For so many girls the gym is oh-so-important to staying sane on even the most stressful of days. There’s just something so cathartic about channeling every single ounce of tension and frustration in your body into the plastic pedals of a dual-arch trainer. Thirty minutes on the Pike’s Peak setting accompanied by a playlist of my favorite pump-up music and I can literally feel the stress losing its grip on my achy shoulders. Between “Party Rock Anthem” and “We R Who We R,” I always leave feeling calm and focused. Hey, whatever works!
2. Get Off Campus
Though this may seem easier said than done when you’re buried up to your nose in handouts and half-studied flashcards, it is so important to your sanity. But really. On campus, everyone else is suffering from the same stresses and sources of frustration you are. Go to Central Park and remember what sunlight looks and feels like. Go to a Starbucks near Columbus Circle. Indulge in a half an hour of retail therapy. Walk ten blocks further than usual to pick up some study snacks. Just do it: leave the bubble!
3. Eat a Real Meal
Most of us have two modes when we’re stressed out and majorly under the gun: we either drain snack bags by the hour or we simply forget about food’s existence and fill growling stomachs with coffee and panicked breaths. But let’s be real—who can actually work while hangry? Being hangry (hungry + angry—basically when you reach that point of starvation when you want to light your textbooks on fire) is productivity’s worst enemy. Take the time to get yourself at least one real meal a day. Maybe you’re a breakfast girl and you make a mean omelet pre-Diana lockdown, or perhaps you’re more of the lunching type and prefer salmon and avocado rolls while in the reading room. Whatever it is, just make sure it isn’t coming out of any kind of shiny foil or a box. If it can live for hours at a time in the bottom of your backpack, you are picking the wrong foods. Think perishable, think fresh, think of your mom’s definition of real food.
4. Make Realistic Lists
Lists are great organizational tools and can definitely keep you on track up to a point. The problem arises when your list becomes more like an unabridged encyclopedia. To reverse the cycle of hyping up your own stress, make lists for one day at a time. Maybe a smaller scale works even better for you—make a list of what you want to accomplish in that three-hour chunk of Diana time you set aside. Help yourself out and make it realistic, too! The chances of you writing a research paper in two hours are slim. Setting realistic goals for your time significantly increases your chances of fulfilling them, which will then make you feel so much more empowered to keep on trucking through the next items on the list later!
5. Find a Study Space Where You Feel Comfortable
Not everyone is a Butler 209 girl. I just don’t like the 360 degree landscape of other anxious students and the perpetual clicking of keys. Maybe the comfy vibe of the Diana Center LL2 is more your speed, or perhaps your own desk makes you buckle down and plow through mountains of reading the fastest. Wherever that studying comfort zone is where you can just cruise on ahead, find it ASAP! If you’re uncomfortable, you will get distracted. The sooner you get comfortable and relax, the faster you will be able to cross chunks of work off of the day’s extensive list.
My mom has always told me that if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. College poses much more dangerous and sneaky threats to your physical and mental wellbeing than high school did. This isn’t a matter of gaining the Freshman 15 or partying (though both are obviously prevalent issues on any campus). It seems that stress is the greatest obstacle to success that today’s college students face. According to Time Magazine, “College students are more stressed out than ever before — at least according to the latest findings of a large, national survey that has been conducted annually for the last 25 years” (Healthland, “Why Are College Students Reporting Record High Stress Levels? Thursday, January 27, 2011). The study, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, states that, “Only 51.9 percent of students reported that their emotional health was in the “highest 10 percent” or “above average,” (The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010). That data directly challenges my mom’s wise advice each time we pull yet another all-nighter. It is up to each of us as capable, strong collegiettes™ to manage our own stress levels, whether through the stress busters above or through your own methods, to ensure continued success and happiness during our precious time here at Barnard.