Tips to Manage Student Stress

Tips to Manage Student Stress

As a student majoring in a chosen degree, it’s safe to assume that you’re familiar with on-going stress in your life, whether that is from finances, academic strain or pressures from family and friends.

But here’s the great news: you’re not alone, and even better than that, is you can now combat stress with these four easy tips on how to deal with stress as a student.

Tip 1: Be organised

Depending on how many classes you’re enrolled in, you want to create a helpful system that allows you to manage the tasks and obligations that each of these classes will undoubtedly impose on you. Otherwise, you will at some point feel overwhelmed—you don’t want that, we don’t want that, so organisation is the key to stop it from happening.

Here’s how you can do that:

Put tasks in your calendar, as well as exam dates and due dates. Doing this will help reduce the feeling of dread, chaos and uncertainly you might feel when it comes to your academics.

But organisation should extend to other parts of our life too, such as time management.

Instead of attending each day with a blank slate, apply some strategy: during those hours when you know you’re the most productive, plan on putting aside the bulk of your work for that period. And during those hours when you know you’ll struggle to stay focused, get some exercise done or tackle some daily chores.

This will help you feel accomplished which will increase positivity and help you maintain a motivated mind.

Staying organised in this way will ward off procrastination too which remains one of the most common and insidious stresses out there. And while you’re sticking it to procrastination, you also reduce the chances of loneliness, an even worse and far more crippling problem that no student should ever have to experience.

Tip 2: Exercise

I am sure you expected this one to be on our top four tips to dealing with stress and who could blame you?

Exercise is a phenomenal way to let off steam and clear our heads. It’s so important and helpful that we wrote a whole blog on it, specifically where to exercise while living at The Fields. You can check out the article here – Where Can I Exercise In Pretoria

Like we mentioned above, the feeling of loneliness is something that you want to avoid, and exercise helps massively with this: you’re staying active, feeling good, strong, and healthy, leaving no place for the feeling of loneliness to take root, and therefore reducing stress in your life.

Tip 3: Feeling overwhelmed

When it comes to feeling overwhelmed, two things have been proven useful to combating stress.

1. Slow and deep breathing.
2. Mindful observations.

In moments of stress, find a quiet and safe place to retreat to and begin a session of slow and deep breathing.

This helps the parasympathetic nervous system responsible for the rest and digest functions in the body. Slow and deep breathing counteract the mind’s Flight or Fight Responses, helping you cope with your situation better and allowing you to deal with it more effectively.

Now the power of mindfulness is incredible and effective too because what you’re doing is merely applying a simple mental shift; instead of wanting to run away from the issues at hand, decide that you’ll ‘watch it’.

In other words, instead of approaching your dilemmas with fear, you should meet them with curiosity. Seek to understand the problem, where it came from and how long it intends to stay. Through this mind shift you’re no longer clouded by fear or stress but are now able to find and implement a solution.

Tip 4: Break down the problems

When you’re faced with a massive task, like getting your degree, instead of just focusing on getting your degree, break down the challenge into smaller and easier-to-manage challenges.

For example:

Imagine you’re facing a massive mountain contemplating the daunting journey of reaching the top. Stop immediately and set your mind on first putting on your climbing boots. Once your boots are on, your next task should be to head towards the base of the mountain. From there, your new objective would be to find the first step towards getting higher up the mountain.

In simpler terms, change your mindset.

Break the massive task into many smaller and easier tasks that you can tackle one by one. Before you know it, you’ve overcome the perceived obstacles that had loomed large above you.

Stress less while you’re at home

At The Fields, we’re mindful of ensuring that our environment remains stress-free and that you get the most out of your studies. Uncapped WiFi is offered for free and we have a generator to keep the communal area up and running during electricity outages.  We have a welcoming student centre featuring a study area, foosball, chess wall and chill area.

Some additional bonuses include easy access to nearby shops, an on-site restaurant and a Virgin Active that is on your doorstep. Students staying at The Fields also get to enjoy either the freedom of living by yourself or sharing with like-minded individuals. Choose from a variety of accommodation styles and sizes, all including an en-suite bathroom and kitchen with quality finishes.

Sign up now and join countless others who call The Fields their home.

Need help? Or just need to chat to someone? Give one of the UP experts a call if you need assistance on 079 452 7944.