College Stress

By Aaron Harder

We all get stressed out sometimes. In college the cause of this stress is generally having a lot of schoolwork due at the same time. It might seem like your professors coordinate and plan this. After four years in college, I’m convinced …

Complaining about these conspiracies is not that productive when there are tests and paper deadlines approaching. So here are a few steps to help you deal with stress:

  1. Sleep: Stress and lack of sleep makes people grumpy so not sleeping while feeling stressed out means you’ll become super grumpy, making a stressful week even worse. Be sure to get plenty of sleep. It will be worth it.
  2. Eat on a regular basis: Stress and hunger can be a bad combination, but when stressed, it is easy to cut things out your life. Some things will need to be cut out when busy; however, food is not one of them. Try to keep a schedule and eat as healthy as you can during a stressful week.
  3. Reward yourself for accomplishing certain tasks or steps: Give yourself goals to reach. For example, if you study for a test for an hour you can take a break and talk with friends for a little while. Or when writing a paper, bribe yourself with your favorite cup of coffee. Give yourself something to look forward to!

Stress is an inevitable part of life and being able to handle stressful times may take work and practice. I hope these tips help you relax and develop the skills necessary when feeling stressed out.

Fueled by Distraction

By Aaron Carter

One of the more nostalgic parts of my childhood is in the form of a restaurant that my family frequented when I was about five. It was a cheap, Greek-style place, with torn up carpet floors and dusty, fake plants hanging in every ceiling corner. Back then, you still had to specify that you wanted to sit in the non-smoking section. The glasses were a strange yellow color and all the food seemed like it had been fried. The placemats were thin white paper with an odd tan border design that looked like it had been borrowed from an ancient city somewhere.

I remember when that place got a TV. Everyone was excited. When that happened, instead of specifying whether or not they wanted to sit in the non-smoking section, customers began to specify whether or not they wanted to sit near the TV. They always did. Even some smokers abstained just to be near the screen. It was a major attraction.

Of course, we were all excited, especially my brother and I. It seemed like the future was finally moving in. I remember telling him that some day we’d have TVs that could fit in our pockets and play video games with graphics that were on par with the Nintendo 64. We would never be bored again.

Now, almost every dine-in restaurant has a TV. And if there are none in the dining area, there is nearly always one behind the bar. I used to make fun of my dad for spacing out and becoming absorbed by the screen. We would strategically position ourselves so that he wouldn’t face it and we could talk with him without worrying about him getting distracted. Today, there are screens everywhere, and I find myself getting distracted just like my dad, but not just by TVs. Everything has a screen now.

I’ve learned pretty quickly that I can’t actually study if there’s a screen in front of me. If I put my phone on the table next to my homework, it takes less than a minute for me to pick it back up again and click it back to life. It takes effort to have a conversation that goes further than simply skin-deep. If I go to a restaurant, there is almost nowhere I can sit where there isn’t some flash of light and motion ocurring in the corner of my eye. It takes work to stay focused.

I’m no Luddite, but it gets out of hand at times. I see students doing math problems at the library with a laptop open so they can take momentary breaks to check up on some notifications. I even see some people trying to read a textbook with their phone sitting on the page. It’s not an effective way to work and it’s definitely not an effective way to connect with a book, a writing project, or a person.

Even if you don’t think you are distracted, try eliminating screens from your view, just to see how much of a difference it makes. I know once the TV was set up in that restaurant, my family stopped engaging at the table as well as we used to. I also know that once we all had smart phones, interaction became shallower than a tide pool. Something tells me that it would be easy to get back to really focusing on each other if the screens weren’t such a big part of everything. It’s better to just plain focus than it is to have to continually refocus.

Locked Out of My Room – No Big Deal (by Grant Siluangkhot)

Just the other night I had the pleasure of being outside of my room and without a key. After enjoying a night at Vertical Ministries’ worship service at Common Grounds (a homely coffee shop just right off campus), I entered Brooks College just as I usually would. This time, however, I couldn’t find my ID card. It wasn’t in my wallet. As I stood outside of the locked entrance to the guys’ side, I frantically searched my pockets and the ground but there was no sign of my card.  I was doomed. At least, it felt that way.

Imagine my surprise to realize that I was locked out!

 

I was lucky enough to have a floor-mate let me in. As I walked up the stairs, I checked my pockets again for my card. I could have dropped it anywhere from Common Grounds to Brooks, and I really didn’t want to go through the process of paying for and getting a new one.

I eventually stopped looking and convinced myself that it might have been in my room and that I just had forgotten to take it. When I got to my floor, I found out that none of my suitemates were in, so I decided to wait for one to get back. It’s a fairly simple process to go to the front desk and ask for an unlock code to a room, but I decided not to risk the embarrassment. Besides, I still had the option to wait.

Just over the past four weeks, I’ve gotten to make friends with many of my floor-mates, so there were plenty of people to visit. During this time, I used a computer to check my assignments, watched the ridiculous ending to a football game, and talked to a floor-mate who I never really got a chance to talk to before.

Before too long, I went back to my room, knocked, and my roommate let me in. You won’t guess what was on my desk. It was my ID card! It had been there waiting for me the whole time. I was relieved that I didn’t have to replace it, and now that I think about this experience, I’m glad that I was able to take a short break from studying to spend some time with my floor-mates.