Dealing With Stress

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Hello Self improvement community 🤗.I am so delighted to join this group. I have my first post below about how I dealt with examination stress as an undergraduate. Kindly read through.

Almost every student in the university undergoes stress in one way or the other – if not everyday, then towards the end of each semester, and especially during examinations.

This made me recall my time as an undergraduate.

Just like most students, I get stressed with a lot of pressure almost every day except for the weekends. This stress then hit me in multiple folds when tests and examinations periods approached every semester.

In my own terms, I define stress as emotional pressure piled up as a result of excessive worries.

Stress can have effects on various aspects of life such as physical health, interactions with others, goals, and priorities.

Moreover, the stress that I experienced as an undergraduate caused me to always break down during or immediately after the examinations in each semester.

My interactions with my friends and others around me changed in a negative way that I literally dished toxicity to them – I can remember that they’d always complain about my mood and the way I reacted towards them.

Also, the goals that I set usually at the beginning of the semester began to become unrealistic and too much towards the end of the semester.

However, things turned around for me in my fourth year when I decided to make a difference by actively dealing with stress that I face prior to examinations.
Below are a few points that helped me deal with stress effectively.

•Time management

I set one task at a time. Most times, I list down all of my to-do activities for each day and follow suit.

This helps me to be in control of all of my actions and as such allocate required time to all of the activities.

•Setting reasonable goals

Back then in school, I’d pack about five courses with at least ten topics each and decide to study them all in a day. This isn’t entirely possible under normal circumstances but the effect of the goals that I’ve set has had a negative effect on my mind which caused me to worry so much and in turn led to stress.

How did I help this?

All I did was take one course at a time, set studying timetables( though I didn’t follow it at all times) and follow through over a longer period of time.
•Intermittent gratitude

I made a habit of rewarding myself in between studying.

I set tasks in sections and reward myself after every section. Rewards may be to listen to songs or eat something sweet or watch an episode of a movie or even take a walk.

•Laughter

I also watched comedy videos which made me laugh a lot. So instead of being moody all around based on the fact that examinations are approaching, I rather laugh more at jokes, comedy and other funny things.

This helped boost my mood and made me really lively to do other things, including studying.

•Setting priorities and “posteriorities”
What are priorities and posteriorities?

Priorities are things that we do more of and sooner whereas posteriorities are the things that we do less of or later.

Without setting these things right, one might eventually get overwhelmed with so much to do and with less time which can eventually lead to stress.

At the beginning of the first semester in the fourth year, I set my priorities and posteriorities.

That time around, I didn’t wait for exams to approach before I began studying, this helped me cover a lot over a long period of time and as such reduced my worries when the examinations finally came.

Furthermore, I began to act right and interact with my friends normally instead of giving them an attitude as if I was the only one anxious about the examinations.
I set discussion time with them where we review each course and study together.

From that semester, I didn’t break down in illness again after the examinations and this span through my fifth year as well till graduation.

I hope you found this helpful.

Thank you 🤗.