Causes and Effects of stress on college students - Essay Example

Causes and Effects of stress on college Causes of stress Stress is a response of the body to issues or events that threaten or upset people’s balance (Humphrey, 1982). This process is normal and physical in nature. Stress is very common in college students, as it is common in every human being. As a professor at Strayer University, I present some of the causes and effects of stress in the students as observed. Although stress is very common and most of the time unavoidable, there are solutions and steps that students can take to minimise the effects and be able to live a normal life in school. The major cause of stress, as I have observed, is financial stress. Higher education, in general, is really expensive and a lot of students struggle in keeping up with the expenses. Some students can afford to be in school through support from parents and guardians or through financial help like scholarships but there is a large sea of students who can barely afford tuition fee and other expenses that they need to maintain and balance school life. Some of the key financial stressors include; the tuition cost, how to obtain loans, meeting expenses like books, commuting money and living expenses. The financial strain is too much especially for those who get low incomes and are supposed to stretch the little income to cover for their cost of living and tuition fee. (Humphrey, 1982). It also applies to the students who are able to obtain financial help through loans since they know that they have to repay the loan after some time. The thought of how they will do that gives them stress for the entire period in school. The second major cause of stress in students is academic performance. Poor grades, especially if consistent, have consequences like expulsion from the specific department or failure (Oxington, 2005). This contributes to high levels of stress in the students. In many cases, pressure to obtain good grades from family or even the school admission can lead to students struggling to maintain good grades by reducing the hours of sleep, cheating during examinations etc leading to a decline in performance. This kind of stress has negative impacts on the students. Competition among students can also contribute to stress, as students compete to attain the highest grades. Also, the students who plant to advance to the next level of education-graduate school can exert pressure on themselves as they strain to achieve and maintain high grades. This is also true for students under scholarship programmes who are required to maintain high grades in order to maintain their scholarship funds. For the adult students who go back to school for higher education get more stressed out than the young students without families. They struggle to provide for their families and still pay for their fees especially the ones who have low incomes. (Humphrey, 1982) Their responsibilities like work and family, their financial concerns and their responsibility to provide education for their children are some of the causes of stress in these students. Therefore, their major stress is balancing their home life, careers and studies Economic effects The effects the above causes have on the economy include the students being seriously affected by lacking the accessibility to loans or funds. With the high increase in the number of students enrolling in education, the government and other financial contributors have not been able to keep up the pace of this increase. This then leads to a large number of students who are heavily depending on loans to cater for their fees. Financial barriers then lead to a lot of students dropping out of school as they are unable to pay for their tuition fee. Having many drop outs is not good for the economy of a country as this reduces the number of skilled workers in the market and it of course pushes up the uneducated people in a country. (Humphrey, 1982) Another effect on the economy due to academic performance is that when one is stressed the likely hood of producing half baked professionals is high because due to stress, the students have a hard time grasping all the important details in class. As students compete or go under pressure, a lot of cramming is done and therefore one graduates half-baked with little skills needed to participate in building the economy of a country. Effects on people Stress in the students has many negative effects on the students. Stress has a major relation to concentration. If a student is stressed, the concentration ability is affected too .The pressure exerted on them to study harder and achieve high grades may lead to them trying to find ways to achieve this, as mentioned earlier, by cheating or reducing sleep hours. Depression may also come in worsening their performance and this may make them turn into behaviours like drug abuse, alcoholism or worse. (Landow, 2006).  When the students deprive themselves of sleep or when they overwork, their physical health and mental health deteriorates. Long term problems related to health may come as a result of stress in school like hypertension, heart diseases, diabetes and many more. In short, this kind of stress leads to heavy negative outcomes on health (Oxington, 2005).  Another effect on people is that stress affects the relationships in a student’s life. Stress can disturb the emotional stability of a person making one irritable or defensive, among others and this affects the ones around that particular person. It may be a friend, family member, your teacher or even classmates. For the adults who are with families, their struggle to maintain balance in their social life, careers, home and studies may distort their emotions as part of the effects of stress thus affecting their relationships with others. (Oxington, 2005).  Despite the fact that stress is always there, there are ways to ensure that students have a relaxed and calm experience in college as they pursue their dreams through education. This will lead to them having a positive experience in the university. One of the ways is to encourage students to remove themselves from stimuli that cause stress for example, changing the environment of study so as to relax while studying to improve academic performance. By ensuring that assignments, term papers and projects are done in time, the students become more organised therefore the need to rush and struggle is minimised. (Landow, 2006).  Offering counselling programmes to students, especially for the new students, as well as continuing students may give insight to the students and prepare them psychologically for the programmes that lie ahead of them so that they may know what to expect will be helpful. Also, offering skills of life to help students together with counselling will help the students adapt to school life and also prepare them for life after school. References Humphrey, J. H. (1982). A textbook of stress for college students. Springfield, Ill: Thomas. Landow, M. V. (2006). Stress and mental health of college students. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Oxington, K. V. (2005). Psychology of stress. New York: Nova Biomedical Books. Read More