College brings many eye-opening experiences during its time, one of them being just how much stress learning can bring on. I was prepared for the stress of class, long days and big assignments. Before it even started I knew it would be stressful. It never occurred to me though that as my stress changes so should my ways of dealing with it. One of my biggest mistakes this year was trying to deal with new stress in old ways. When I finally did figure this out it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. My plan this semester was to work out a few times a week to help reduce my stress. At the beginning of the semester I found two times a week that worked for me. I planned on going by myself and spending about an hour there. Over the semester though my plans changed slightly.
The most efficient way for me to deal with stress is exercise. I have been given the advice to “work off stress” by many people in my life. At the start of the semester I would go to the RecFit twice a week and work out. It was something I looked forward to and enjoyed. I planned my schedule around it and it relieved a lot of stress. This taught me how much my body needs some sort of physical workout to keep me healthy. About of two month later my schedule got chaotic. I had little time for myself and got frustrated at how much time I was using with my two workouts a week. Needing that time, I dropped both of them to get assignments done. After being so frustrated with this and other stressful things in my life I had a talk with a professor. She gave me some great advice that will be so helpful now in the future. After telling her my issue she pointed out that my way of recharging my batteries does not have to be so time consuming. I could go for a ten-minuet walk instead of an hour-long workout. This is such a good point; I do not know why I never thought about that.
Now I enjoy ten minuet walks anytime I have a spare ten minuets and the weather is nice. My fiancé and I started walking together when we talk about wedding and house plans. When I am stuck with a homework problem or have writer’s block I take a lab around campus. This was of recharging my batteries is so perfect because it does not take up so much time, therefore adding more stress. Also I realized from my professor who suggest this, just how important it is to have a person to talk to outside of my friends and family. While my close friends and family members are great listeners, it is important to have someone outside of them that I can talk to. It is a big stress releaser and way of recharging my batteries to have a person hear me talk and give me supporting advice. This year was a huge year stress wise for me. I had more stressful things happen than ever before. Yet, in this time I learned so much about handling stress and understanding myself more than I ever thought I would.
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