According to stressawarenessmonth.com, “Stress Awareness Month has been held every April, since 1992. During this annual thirty day period, health care professionals and health promotion experts across the country will join forces to increase public awareness about both the causes and cures for our modern stress epidemic.” Although we only dedicate one month to bringing awareness to it, stress is something that doesn’t limit itself to affecting people for just one month out of the entire year.
Like most college students, I attend school and work part time and can often find myself stressed out over how to balance the two. It’s especially hard given SCAD’s rigorous quarter system that condenses a semester’s worth of work into 10 weeks, and often times it can feel like when I’m not at work, I’m at school – constantly flip-flopping back and forth between one or the other. This particular quarter I have found myself struggling with the classes I’m taking and having to put in the extra time to practicing certain things, which usually means I’m finding myself on campus either before or after work, or during my days off from both. Feeling like I’m constantly on the non-stop track has made me realize that I have managed to isolate myself quite a bit from some of my friends, as well as not take as good care of myself as I should be.
While this piece is not exactly a self-help type, I think it’s important that we all take a second to step back and take a breather when things get to be too much. As I just mentioned, I feel like I’ve been a bit isolated from my (non-school) companions to the extent to where I’ve been feeling like a bad friend altogether. However. I realize that just because I may not be able to physically hang out with or see my friends as much as possible, it doesn’t mean that I can’t take a couple minutes out of my days to send a quick text out and check in on them too. Reaching out can sometimes be the hardest, but once you get the ball rolling, you both will be glad you did. For example, some time in this past week, a friend of mine that I used to be really close to in high school reached out to me to see how I was doing. She now lives up in D.C. and I hadn’t seen her much since graduating high school in 2013. However, once we started talking and catching each other up on a bit of what we’d had going on since then, it felt just like old times. And despite the very obvious distance between the two of us, I walked out of that conversation feeling lighter, loved, and supported. Similarly, I lucked out this quarter and managed to land a class with two of my best friends. Although I may not get to see them much outside of class, they’ve made it easier to learn darkroom techniques together and have proven to be a huge support system for me on days when I feel like I’m just not doing quite right. We’ve also tried to establish times on days we’re all free – between work or classes – to put into practice what we’ve learned with the goal of eventually having things become second nature to us. I’ve found that this has helped ease my stress tremendously, boosted my confidence in my work, and has allowed for me to squeeze in some much needed friend time where I can.
I think too often we set expectations for ourselves that create circumstances in which we are forced to stretch ourselves thin without others ever actually asking that of us. When it feels like you’re getting closer to your breaking point, it’s important to take a second and step back to acknowledge everything that you are doing right. Give yourself a little credit. And if there is room to improve, go about it in a strategic matter – such as better organizing yourself to make things a little easier on you or setting specific time frames in which to get things done. It’s always easy to feel like you could be doing more, but at the end of the day, you just have to realize that you’re doing your best. While it may not always be enough to everyone, sometimes you have to learn to prioritize yourself. After all, everything starts with you.