Stress And How To Cope With It

HSE students give advice on coping with stress.

Stress And How To Cope With It

Stress is a familiar feeling for every student. A huge amount of deadlines and preparation for exams are very stressful for most of the students. It can also affect their mental health. A particularly difficult period of emotional stress on a student becomes the very first time after graduating from school and entering a university. This is a new step in a completely uncharted adult world for a youngster.

Many students have left their parental home and moved to another city - such a dramatic change of scenery can affect the psychological health of the student crucially.

Besides, we must not forget that for some people communication with other people is a rather complicated process, especially when after school they find themselves in a university full of strangers, where they must make new friends. This puts a lot of pressure on many people, which affects their stress levels at school and at home. Mental health is as important as physical health, so it is crucial to ensure that you do not have a lot of stress in your life. Too much stress can cause many diseases and health problems. Mental disorders, panic attacks, communication problems, various heart diseases - that is just a small part of things that can happen with you if you will have too much stress in your life! In this article, we would like to tell you about where students’ stress come from and how to deal with it.

Reasons why we experience stress

Stress is a major part of a student’s life. New circle of friends, a job, uncertain future, responsibility and other aspects of coming adulthood stress the youth out. In addition, when boys and girls start their studying, it doubles with extra points to be concern of - many different kinds of work (the reason of constant deadlines), examinations, and difficulties in organizing the process of studying. For the majority of elder students there is an extra problem of stable pressure of combining work and study. For students who live in the dormitories and residents there is a stress of housing, overcrowding, noise from neighbors. It becomes a real challenge to find the golden mean and manage to balance the demands of family and friends while studying. Finally, the main reason that has been cited commonly by most students is the stress of adjusting to live in a new environment of university life.

Some tips how to cope with stress

So, what can we do to manage our stress and cope with it? We share some advice on how you can deal with nervous situations while getting a degree.

  1. Take care of yourself. Growing up you start to understand how important it is. Find some free hours in a week and organize «me-time» - have a rest, do nothing connected with studying and work (or whatever what makes you nervous). You can spend time with friends or doing everything that makes your happy. It might be something about your hobbies and interests – the main idea of this is to take a break and find a distraction.
  2. Give a rest to your body. Any kinds of physical activity help you to relax and release endorphins in a body, producing feeling of well-being. You can try to do sports, yoga or a massage.
  3. Remember that you are what you eat – try to follow a heathy lifestyle, it keeps brain working good. Eat healthy food, balance your meals, do some exercises on daily basis, get enough sleep and avoid alcohol and smoking.
  4. Think positively. Consider every challenge as a positive experience and use this stress as stimulus to move on to other achievements.
  5. One of the most practical advice is only in three words – manage your time. «To-do» lists, notes, calendars, planners, specialized apps – you can find your way to organize your lifetime. It is a real key to be able to do everything in time. One of the most popular techniques is the priority matrix, which is based on the principle of urgent and important businesses. You should prioritise and divide all tasks into four categories – do first (high importance & high urgency), do next (high importance & low urgency), do later (low importance & high urgency) and do not do - means not now - (low importance & low urgency).

Stress management at HSE University

Getting a university degree might be a challenging task since this period is packed with a lot of new people to meet and activities that involve both mental and physical efforts. University time is shaping one's identity and behavior, so if you struggle with some aspects of student life, there is nothing to be ashamed of.

HSE University offers various solutions to help students cope with their possible mental problems. One of them is a Centre for Psychological Counselling that offers both group and individual psychological sessions for English and Russian speaking students. These meetings usually involve discussing one’s mental problems and seeking a specialist advice. It is possible to sign up for an appointment via phone: 8(915)260-06-20, online form or mail: cpkhse@hse.ru More detailed information on how to sign for a session can be found at this page. The qualified psychologists of HSE can help you find a solution to your mental problems or help you contact a psychiatrist and get privileged treatment. It is also possible to recieve help through toll-free psychological help hotline: 8-800-250-0433 or Telegram bot @VyshkaPsyBot

HSE Mental Health Day

Apart from everything, HSE University holds various events that include covering students’ mental problems. One has recently taken place at Pokrovka Complex - HSE Mental Health Day involved lectures on the importance of mental health caring, master classes, yoga and even therapy dog sessions. October 10th is the international mental health day, and HSE University contributed to the problem of mental health and helped its students to face and solve their psychological injuries. You can read more about this event here.

It is unfortunate that this event is being held only once a year, but we hope that the HSE Mental Health Day 2020 will bring us much joy, happiness and assistance in coping with mental issues.

 

Studying in the university can be extremely stressful experience and sometimes stress is inevitable, but his does not mean that you cannot fight it back. That is why it very important not to forget how to cope with it. By advices above you can respond to stress more successfully. We hope that this article will help someone who have problems with dealing with stress in university.

Text by

Anna Bogun

Sergey Nesterov

Eduard Oksem