Don't Let Stress Ruin You!

As the end of year approaches, I am pretty sure many of us are anticipated to get out of school and begin enjoying the good vacation under the warm sun. It is this period of time in which many of us feel very stressed out not only in school work but also in other many factors around us, such as financial, social, familial, locational, and etc. It is very hard to avoid those stress to come to you. And I say, if we cannot avoid the stress, let us get rid of it!

For this week's CLS strategy, we learned about the stress management strategies, which help us how to manage our stress to avoid it from ruining our work. The finals are coming up and we sure do no want these stress to ruin our last work!

When people are stressed out, they would want to stop doing whatever they are doing and just do nothing but entertain or rest themselves: they just want to forget about things that give them the stress. I also feel awefully stressed out these days from many things. Not only that I am stressing out on my GPA because I really need to get good GPA in order to enter Newhouse next year, but also because I want to keep my GPA high throughout the rest of my college year. However, GPA was not the only factor that gave me a stress, and I used the Stress Diagram from the CLS class to see what caused my stress.

From making the diagram, I realized the biggest stress I got were from Financial, GPA, and anticipation about the Summer. I did not have a job to keep me financially stable, not even a part time job. All I got was monthly allowance from my parents and this was starting to get overwhelming. No longer did I think I was able to manage my college life solely from my parents' allowance. And I started to think I needed to look for a job. This has been giving me a stress for awhile. Also, as I mentioned, GPA has always been a stress to me for I was always worrying about not getting good GPA. I really want to spend my summer as effectively as possible. I did not want to be a bum for four months, doing nothing but staying at home. As summer vacation approaches, I am starting to feel stressful about what I should be doing during summer. Whether it was summer courses or working at a job, I neeeded to find something out or I would continue to be stressed about it. Also, my family and friends always give me a stress not because they annoy me or anything but because I always think about keeping a good relationship between them. I want to keep my family, especially my parents, to be proud of my work and myself; I want to continue to have a good relationship with my friends even if I do not see them a lot during summer. These always give me a strss for I do not want to disappoint my family and my friends.

There are many ways to relieve my stress. Some of them are to play sports with friends such as soccer or basketball, hang around with friends outside, go out to a party on weekends, etc. However, when I need to work on school work, I simply do not have time to do these things. Because of this, I decided to use the 10 Minute Vacation I learned from CLS class. This is a strategy that I can use during I work on my school works. As an example, when I need to read a chapter from HST 102 textbook, I can read a section and rest for 10 minutes. If I think a section is too short, I can read two sections and rest for 10 minutes. Also for AST 104 class, whenever I am doing online homework assignment, I could work on a page and rest for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I would stop whatever I was doing and immediately go back to work. This not only keeps me working on whatever I need to do, but also keep me stress - off while doing it. If I, for example, read a section, stopped, and went on Internet surfing for more than 30 minutes, I would not be able to stop from it. Instead I would continue doing Internet until I realize that I have been on Internet for an hour. This would, again, give me a stress for having too much work at too little time. However, if I do the 10 Minute Vavation, I would be on track, without feeling stressful. During the 10 minutes, I could go on a Youtube and watch entertaining videos, or get on Facebook and check on my friends' interesting status. However, I would do this for ONLY 10 minutes. After that, back to work!

You all should try to list out the causes for your stress and see what you can do to manage those stresses. Depending on what type of stress you get, there could be different ways to get rid of it. So, when stress comes to you, do not let it ruin you. Instead, you can let it come and you can get rid of it immediately! The end is coming guys, let's all not lose track! We can do it!!