You Can Manage To Manage Your Stressful Life
Jamie Cohen

The stress levels in colleges across the country are rising. According to the American Association of Suicidology the rise of suicide among students in college is rising, so why is it that the rates are rising? Is it simply that population is rising and statistics are to follow, or is there something else that is causing the stress level to rise?

Let’s face it, today is nothing like yesterday. College is a completely different world then it was twenty years ago. According to the University of Florida Counseling Center noise, pollution, crowding are all leading reasons to why a person can become stressed, so with symptoms like these, is there any wonder as to how students these days are?

Going to school in today’s world is different because while there is much more freedom and job possibilities out there that doesn’t necessarily mean that the job will be waiting for you when you get out of school. There is also a networking factor.

More then ever we are learning that it’s not what you know but rather who you know. This puts a new factor in student’s daily lives, a social factor that wasn’t always considered an important part of college life. In the University of Washington & Jefferson College, in Washington, Pa., 90% of the pre-med majors will receive jobs, or recommendations based on the relationships that they have built with their mentoring professors.

This is just another reason for stress level, but the Counseling Center also mentions a health fear, a fear that is so much more heightened in today’s time then it was in the past. AIDS, HPV and other sexually transmitted diseases grow among the college community, a fact that most college students are aware of.

Not only do stress cause mood swings and especially irritability, but it also can create sickness and difficulty sleeping according to the Counseling Center. The problem with these symptoms is that getting sick and being irritable doesn’t mix well with doing well in school. It causes absences in class, poor studying and irresponsibility especially when goals aren’t clear. The good news is that there are ways to organize your life to make it stress free, well not completely, but definitely less-stressful.

Believe it or not, one of the best ways to keep stress away is in your diet. Proteins and carbohydrates break down in your system and give you energy and endurance, which is important for balance in your life. A healthy diet and stable diet creates stability in your body which decreases your chance of getting sick.

Besides diet, techniques such as talking out your problems or organizing your goals, and setting deadlines for your life helps plan out your life, allowing stress some time off. While stress will never be gone, there are ways to treat it, and while stress levels grow among college students in today’s society with organization in your life, you can manage to manage your life with a little less stress.