Posts tagged with stress.
The stress tsunami
Looking around my room, you'd think things have fallen apart. There's a half-drunk mug of cold tea on my desk, last sipped two days ago. The teapot I used sits next to it, its dark-blue enamel surface wearing a fine layer of dust. The paper innards of my binders have burst all over my room, leaving a layered chaos of subject notes on my desk, on my bed and under my chair. And my load of laundry has once again reached dreadful proportions.
At the moment I'm in the middle of a two-week period that's filled with two papers and four exams. Since September I've had this period marked off in my calendar with red ink. Yet the advance warning did little to prepare me. I'm swamped, finishing one thing only to begin another.
Since September, my stress has risen and fallen in a sinuous curve. There are moments when all pressures are removed, when everything runs well and problems are little black blips barely perceptible in the distance. Then the blips get closer and incrementally become big black blots. Little by little my stress goes up the slope, until I'm at the peak.
Right now I'm at the peak and I badly want to slide down and slip into a nice, easy Christmas break.
I've never had to do so much in so little time. I don't have much choice but to work. If I don't work, I get bad grades. Yet Elliot, a third-year on my floor, is convinced I study too much. I might, but I won't know until I write my exams and papers and get my marks back. So the objective then is to keep my stress and my anxiety under control. I do this by planning out my schedule to the umpteenth detail. I know exactly what I need to do and when I need to do it. I ruthlessly prioritize and I make sure I take breaks. I don't get upset if I deviate from my schedule; it's just a way to remove all the things I have to do from my head and see them on paper. Once they're on paper in a list that isn't infinite, my work becomes less intimidating.
The first few months of your first year can be incredibly stressful. You're plunging yourself into an environment that you know little about. You don't know how the system works and you don't know how to get the marks you want. And the only way you find out is through experience. All the upper-years I've met have this cool aura about them when it comes to schoolwork. That's not to say they don't get stressed, but they know how to write a paper and study for a test a lot better than I do. In December, after the haze of my first few months has settled and I get my marks back, hopefully all will be revealed to me. Because I don't really want to spend four years being as keyed up as I am right now.
Tagged with
laundry,
stress,
exams,
ian,
wylie
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BRYCE WARNES
