Preventing anxiety If you are taking 15 credits and only devoting five hours a week to studying out side of class, Linda Meashey, PSH counselor, gives you a fair warning. Meashey said time management skills are essential to success in college as she presented the lecture series "Be Anxious for Nothing: Why We Don't Accomplish What We Set Out To Do the Beginning of the Semester," on Thursday to first-year college students. "Time management is the backbone of everything you are going to do in col lege,"Meashey said. Meashey explained that when we have an hour free in between classes, we need to do something that will make us feel ready for the next class including studying, relaxing or catching up with a friend. "What you don't want to do is leave space for wasted time on activities you don't enjoy," she said. She listed factors that inhibit students from achieving original goals, with examples ranging from preparing for the unexpected to tackling both the fear of failure and the fear of success. ductive in the long run, however, students should not set their expectations too low. That becomes counterproductive because you are left either playing catch-up or you fail because of lack of effort. Meashey recommended using a monthly calendar to track what needs to be done. "You have to have the big picture," she said. "What do I have to have done by the end of the semester?" After the hour-long discussion, students who attended said they feel better about the school year. "She reinforced what I already knew," said Christopher Roening, environmental engineering. "I should be working that hard and asking questions if I need help." PUTTING STRESS IN ITS PLACE Matt Hinson just spent a year abroad in China. He said this experience has shaped him as a person and helped to broaden his horizons. However, Hinson said the change of moving to a foreign country caused a lot of stress. He now had to change schools, find a new job, a new home and a new language. Hinson is not alone with this stress. It turns out that stress is synonymous with change, something college students are solidly familiar with. Anything that caus es a change in your life causes stress. Starting in a new school, moving, and bal ancing extracurricular activities make adaptation difficult. "Stress is a given," said Linda Meashey, PSH counselor. "Even if we could have a stress free life, we wouldn't want it." Meashey explained that a certain amount of stress is motivational, but what is important is that we develop a strategy for stress. " Students said they set rules for themselves to help deal with the changes. Hinson said his rules are simple. "I work on tasks only till they frustrate me, take a day off now and then and never work more than 12 hours in a day." But everyone deals with stress differently. Julie Martin, a Music major, said she tries to plan her day so that she can find time to fit everything in. "Sometimes I just chill for a while with a book or watch TV so I can relax for a few minutes and not let everything get to me," Martin said. There are several different types of stress. Some are so commonplace that you might not realize they are stressful. These include: emotional stress, illness, push ing your body too hard, environmental factors and hormonal factors. Meashey said the students she counsels have emotional stress including depression and anxiety. Many times, students simply need to prioritize and By RACHEL SHEPHERD Features Editor "We tend to avoid the things that don't come easily," Meashey said. "As first year students, you will face these things and change your goals." She also explained that changing goals is a good thing if it will make you more pro- By RACHEL SHEPHARD Features Editor Above: Linda Meashey presents techniques to help students overcome anxiety Concerned students absorb advice about time management so they don't catch themselves being too far behind in their studies. "schedule their time." However, when time constraints affect students, Meashey emphasizes that students have to set guidelines for themselves and if those guide lines are not working, students may want to seek help in setting a schedule and adhering to it. "If students do not handle stress effectively, overtime they may suffer from some type of breakdown, either mental or physical," • Meashey said. Meashey gave some sugges tions for dealing with stress. She said exercising, getting eight hours of sleep, having people to talk to, proper plan ning, eating right and limiting caffeine intake are some of the highlights to lessening stress. Anthony Strayer, MET, agreed that working out tends to help him manage his stress "I try not to let things bother me too much. Just do what needs to be done and don't get yourself too worked up thinking about it," Strayer said. Mike Behney, communications, said he handles stress by, "going to the gym or the bar." Whatever your way of handling the changing demands in life, psychologists, such as Meashey, remind us that stress is natural. It is how you balance stress in order to avoid damaging your health that matters. "I try to find some time for myself. All I can do is take it one day at a time," said Jodie Preisler, a communications major. photos by Joe J. Ruggiero
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