Students get stung by stress

Although Tech is one of the nation's top public schools, some of its undergraduates have yet to mentally leave their nests.

Students have moved into dorms with orderly textbooks, books for understanding the textbooks, notebooks, folders, calculators, rulers and pencils, yet some of their minds crave an idea of where to mentally put the class lectures, homework, reading assignments and outlines which they have received since they have arrived. This mental need of organization causes later what is commonly known as "stress."

Stress is the response to pressure from the outside world. Stress among college freshmen is one of the common types of stress. For those who have just left their accustomed surroundings, this stress could really become a hindrance if not a blockage to the students' learning.

It is Johnny's first time away from home and he realizes that no one is present to keep him from doing what he wants to do. He is now a citizen of Georgia Tech and has the freedom to devour his ice cream before tackling those vegetables.

"Some students handle this stress very well and can even benefit from it by increasing their ability to learn," said Dr. Randy Engle, a professor in the Psychology department.

"Yet this stress becomes harmful when it leaves its normal range," Engle said.

When stress levels increase to more than what the mind can handle, students can develop irregular sleep patterns, obtain unhealthy eating habits and begin to avoid their friends and family.

This negative consequence can impact their learning and their chances of an amazing future. In high school, dragging a lifeless body running on two hours of sleep from class to class was innocuous.

In college, missing one class can really put a student behind. Although most students stress only before and after finals, some students continue to feed their stress to the point that unhealthy activities become habits.

A current Tech student who wishes to remain anonymous remembers what his undergraduate days were like having too many extracurricular activities. It became a struggle to juggle multiple commitments, causing lots of built-up pressure from every direction. Day-to-day activities became far less enjoyable as the stress began to accumulate.

"Sometimes learning in class is like not learning at all. If you are lucky, you understand what the professor is saying, and if you are not, then you just sit through another hour in your life," said the anonymous fourth-year Electrical Engineering student.

Studying is obviously an important factor into success at any university, but especially here at Tech.

Too many extracurricular activities and too little studying for those hard-to-comprehend classes are major causes of stress among undergraduates at Tech. Another major cause of stress is the inability to decide on a major.

For most of the freshmen at Tech, college is the first time in their lives when their future consists not only of school, but also a career in which they take what they have learned in school to make a living. College is the time to decide majors toward a career option and to find out if that major is right for them.

"After a while at Tech I began wondering why I was here at all. I lost interest in my old major," said a fourth-year Bioinformatics major (wishing to remain anonymous) who remembers being pulled under the tide during sophomore year.

After drifting for a while longer to classes, he decided to shut himself up in his dorm, and would only reappear to communicate with his closest friends. He found himself avoiding classes and either staying awake at night or burying his head beneath the covers for elongated hours.

After his repeated attempts at meditation failed to work, this Georgia Tech student actually thought about leaving college. His solution finally came when he switched his major.

Some students have a good temperament for tackling stress and do not let the stress impact their lives at Tech, yet most students still allow stress to take over.

Solving stress for undergrads at Georgia Tech is not simply avoiding it. It is tackling it for its underlying reasons. Whether the cause is from not spending enough time on the harder classes or taking the wrong classes, Tech students when confronted with a significant amount of stress should try to get down to its root as soon as possible.

To get some tips for dealing with stress, visit http://www.successprograms.gatech.edu/php/academic_support/stress.php.