Essay on coping with stress as a student

Stress is a part of everyone’s life. Reasons may be different as may be the level of stress. Students suffer from exam stress, professionals suffer from stress due to work pressure or superior’s high expectations, some suffer from stress due to divorce, other from stress due to mismanagement of finances and some from the death of loved ones.
There are two things that stress me the most. Over a period of time and hours spent in introspection, I’ve realized that stress related to my personal life and loved ones affects me the most. Particularly separation of family members in the form of divorce or death affects me the most. Losing someone we love deeply is the biggest loss to experience. Intense grief and hollowness follows which never seems to let up. Loss of interest in worldly activity is the next effect including consumption of food which seems like a burden. It has been widely acknowledged that there is no right or wrong way to grief. Every person has a different emotional level and to me it’s the most stressful and saddening experience.
It would be inadequate to say that doing something or change of place may help in recovering from such grief. Different people cope with such stress differently. Though the initial few days are the hardest to go through, it becomes easier with time. Distraction works best for me in such hard times. I make it a point to busy myself with studies or other activities which leave little time for recurrent pondering over the loss. Keeping oneself occupied both mentally and physically is the best stress management technique in my views to cope with grief of such intensity.
The other major stress causing factor in my life is management of finances. With limited financial resources at present, sometimes outflow of money becomes higher than inflow and that’s where the stress steps in. When confronted with a situation where I need to decide where to invest and where to avoid due to limited amount of money, I get agitated and lose my ability to make rational decisions at times. Finances are a stress causing factor in the life of most students and everyone has their own way of coping with it.
Advice from some good quarters came in helpful for me to cope with the stress of management of finances. Challenging my lifestyle and needs was very helpful where I segregated the necessary expenses from the unnecessary ones. The activity brought about clarity of where I needed to rack my brains over expenditures and where it was completely unnecessary. The other important technique which goes hand in hand with the previous one was taking control of my life. I made radical decisions about what I wanted to do and what I did not. This helped me decide where my money was worth spending and the activities I would not pursue as they were a total waste of my time and money. The drain of financial resources was now in control. The last thing I needed in this direction was an elderly advice of accepting the things that were beyond my control. It gave me perspective on living with less resources and adapting to the situation in hand.
The above techniques have definitely helped me cope with stress in life. Different people have different ways of handling stress in their lives and there’s professional help available for those who can’t manage it with the help of family and loved ones. Stress management is absolutely essential to lead a healthy and productive life.