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Stressed By Stress

Why is it that almost every incoming freshman thinks that college isn’t going to be all that different from high school? Every year a brand spanking new batch of 18 year olds heads off to college. Some make it and some fall victim to the enormous amount of stress generated by college. While every student is different, there are some common causes of college stress that should be addressed.

A leading cause of college stress is the amount of change student’s face. Everything about their lives changes from where they lay their head at night to what they eat for breakfast. Unfortunately, a lot of people have a hard time with change – it can be a leading cause of stress.

While the financial pressures of college do not affect all students, many of them are. Students who are paying their own way or helping out with their tuition often find trying to balance work and school difficult and stressful. Unfortunately a student has to work they must find a way to balance these two activities.

College is also, to a large degree, self-paced. Vast amounts of reading material, large reports and exams are, for the most part, the responsibility of the student. Many have difficulty with the fact that their professors are not reminding them constantly of assignments and dates. Unless a student finds a way to manage their studies, they can end up very stressed out.

Finally, many students find themselves stressed out by their performance. Students who aren’t pulling the grades they are accustomed to find themselves feeling overwhelmed and stressed out.  Until such students find a way to address their grades or except lower standards, they are likely to remain stressed.

Almost all college students are stressed out about one thing or another – the trick is learning to manage the stress before it gets out of hand.

 

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The Pros and Cons of Selecting More Than One Major

An increasing amount of college students are deciding to pursue more than one academic major. Some are doing so to build their resumes to create a competitive edge in today’s rigorous marketplace and others prepare for careers in multi-disciplinary fields. When deciding to pursue more than one major, there are many important issues to consider.

Pros

  • Having multiple majors on a college transcript shows employers that the graduate is dedicated to hard work, which will reflect in their careers.
  • Students planning to pursue more than one major can still graduate within the normal amount of time because they can complete Advanced Placements courses in high school.
  • Multiple majors helps students pursue diverse interests especially those that are finding it difficult to just choose one area of focus.
  • Multiple majors allow an easier transition for future career changes.
  • Many jobs are becoming more multidisciplinary and requiring additional skills that more than one major can provide.

Cons

  • Pursuing more than major often requires additional time to graduate and increased tuition costs.
  • Some employers may view a student with multiple majors as an individual that has a hard time focusing on a particular area.
  • Since multiple majors take more time, students may not be able to pursue other important college experiences such as internships, leadership roles, volunteer opportunities, extracurricular activities, and study abroad experiences.
  • Some majors are on different ends of the spectrum and do not complement each other to add significant value.

Students who decide to select more than one academic major should access their career objectives and factors that are associated with multiple majors such as the need for multidisciplinary abilities, tuition costs, and time to graduate. Academic advisors, career-services staff members, professionals in the targeted profession, and other resources can assist students with making their decision.

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Typical Factors That Cause Stress Among College Students

Numerous students enrolled in college deal with many factors that contribute to stress. Increased stress in college can be a contributing factor to weight gain, anxiety, depression, and dropping out.

Common Stress Factors:

  1. Academics: many new college students do not understand the magnitude of the amount of work college courses involve, which is significantly more difficult than the average workload in high school. College students also have less support from teachers and parents. Rigorous college courses may involve difficult tests, scheduling problems and various other academics barriers. College students often have to endure long and hard hours of studying which leads to lack of sleep and free time.
  2. Social Experiences: college brings an array of social challenges including leaving a student’s complete support system and developing a new network of social contacts. Other social stressors include being away from home, decreased parental support, sharing living space with a roommate, and trying to balance social experiences and part-time jobs with schoolwork.
  3. Miscellaneous Stressors: There are various other stressors that accompany college life including living independently, staying up late and getting up early, missing home, and deciding how to choose the right major of study. Most students have a hard time of who they want to become sometime during college.

Stress Results

Stress related to college life includes a variety of effects:

  • Feeling overwhelmed: this is one of the most common results of stress in college and many students struggle with trying to find a good balance of school work and social experiences.
  • Gaining or losing weight: many students unintentionally gain or lose weight during their first few years of college as they attempt to deal with stress and other practical and social problems.
  • Dropout: stress of college life contributes significantly to the high dropout rate among college students. According to the 2008 U.S. Census, approximately 50% of American college students who begin college do not graduate.
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Options for Students After High School

There was once a time when only the children of the richest and most powerful families could afford to attempt to get their degree. For those privileged few, an education merely meant that they could hold snooty conversations with the other elites, and run their family businesses with a strong network of other elites. However, for the young high school graduate in this day and age, a degree is far more attainable. It also means different things to this class of individuals than to the aristocrats of the past. There are also plenty of other options for a young person these days, since the field is more open for the laureates of online degrees than for those who have only a high school diploma under their belts.

Simply put, a high school diploma simply is not enough to get many kinds of lucrative jobs. While most people would prefer not to talk about college as just job training, that is a major portion of it. For people who are wanting to emerge from poverty, or for those who come from (and want to maintain) middle class status, a degree is often essential to securing the kind of income that one needs, in order to accomplish these sorts of goals. While there was a point in time when the costs of getting a degree were prohibitive to these less privileged types, the online degree has opened up all new opportunities for them.

Online degrees are pretty much the best thing that has ever happened to college students. Not only can you stay at home and very cheaply attend your virtual classes (as opposed to living in campus housing). Not only can you do your class work on your own schedule, and proceed at your own pace (as opposed to being alternately bored and overworked in a real world classroom setting). All of this is also at a lower price per credit hour than real world college.

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