The Impact of Stress on Academic Success in College Students
XU YONGQI
Sometimes college life can be very stressful, because the pressure from study, relationship, responsibilities and so on. Therefore, defining what cause to stress, how to deal with stress are very important for college students. According to stimulus-based, response-based, and dynamic process, there are three ways of defining stress. Firstly, from Oxford English Dictionary: “to subject (a material thing, a bodily organ, a mental faculty) to stress or strain; to overwork, fatigue”, in other words, pressure produces stress (Butler, 1993). Secondly, stress is the response of noxious or aversive stimuli, which depends on one’s specific characteristics (Selye, 1956). Thirdly, stress as a dynamic process has reflected both internal and external factors, which includes the first and second definitions of stress: the characters of people and their circumstances. Moreover, it also involves the interactions between them (Butler, 1993).
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Based on the definitions of stress, it is difficult to draw a conclusion that the effects of stress are negative, because nothing is good or bad but by conditions. Therefore, the article is going to describe both sides of stress by analysing the good and bad effects of stress. Furthermore, the article will discuss the impact of stress on academic success in college students according to the competition of grades, the need of performance, relationship problems, career choice and many other aspects of the college students’ circumstances (Counseling & Wellness Center, 2013). College students need to face the stress, so it is significant and necessary for them to deal with stress by using a good way.
There are some good effects of stress. Firstly, stress will help people become more creative. People usually has more stress when they move into a new path, not only because it was new to them, but also because they do not know how other people deal with it. If people have the opportunities to ask a writer or an artist on the creative process of their arts, the most frequent answer is that they become successful person by achieving their goals when they are under the stress and suffering from it. Dr – psychologist Larina Kase, says that “Stress is often accompanied by a breakthrough in creativity. If your mind is completely normal and comfortable, you will not have any reason to see things differently.”
Secondly, stress is good for the immune system. Many studies show that the body’s immune system will benefit from the short-wave stress elicit the “fight or flee” (the tension is when people do the test, race or play games with time limits.) “Stress can be useful for the immune system,” it is claimed by Dr. Mark Goulston -psychiatrist. Doctor also explained cortisol (also called “stress hormone”) appearing will increase immunity to the body, but only where balanced and moderate.
Last but not least, stress helps people solve the problems. Most of people experienced stress due to face a difficult situations in their lives or forced to give an important decisions. Stress – this fact can be quite useful, because stress manifestation of people’s values. If people do not care, they will not worry about it at all. Therefore, listen to what stress is will help people find the way to solve the problems. Many studies indicate that people feel happiest when they understand their own emotions and know how to deal with it. Nevertheless, excessive anxiety can also cause the opposite effect, such as depression and anxious.
This paragraph will talk about the common stressors in college life. As I mentioned above, college life can be stressful, there are all kinds of stressors we can find in college. And the reasons of stress can be greateracademicdemands, financial responsibilities. Some problems like being away from home, changes in family relations and one’s social life, facing new environment and exposure to new people, ideas, and temptations, and preparing for life after graduation, all of these are influencing the college students a lot. What’s more, psychological make-up can also play an important role in vulnerability to depression, for people who have low self-esteem, who consistently view themselves and the world with pessimism, or are readily overwhelmed by stress may be especially prone to depression.
Moreover, these are several bad effects of stress. Stress is, something one must not have too much of it; in other words, it is something one must not experience too much of it as it come with heavy ill effects on socially, medically and psychologically. According to many studies done in universities and research facility, the stress influences lives to certain degree that one might not able to recover from ill effects that stress brings.
Primarily, socially, stress could affect the decisions one makes in everyday life; in other words, it will influence one’s social interaction with others such as friends, families and their work. One might say such opinion is exaggerated, but many research indicates that it is not overstated opinion. For instance, relationships are broken because they couldn’t handle the stress brought from the relationship. Furthermore, such stress could influence the relationship with friends due to the peer pressure that might be one large stressor in certain people’s lives. This might even bring some men and women to commit suicide or think about it.
Furthermore, stress could bring unwanted effect in medically. Overloading of stress could bring our immune system down, enabling the harmful bacteria to enter our body system more easily and it disables our immune system to fight such bacteria effectively. Basically, one would have hard time recovering from illness when one gets sick when he or she is in stressful times. Furthermore, stress could make people commit unhealthy behaviour such as eating too much of food, drinking alcoholic drinks, excessive smoking and so on, leading to main health issues such as obesity, alcoholic issues, cancer and more.
However, physical and social harmful effects are not the only harmful effects. The third component that is affected by stress is our psychological well being. As stress targets people physically and socially, it targets our mentality creating psychological stress that could last for long period time. Moreover, such psychology stress could develop into disorders that could take long time to recover. For an example, depression is one of the common psychological disorders that are caused by stress; depending on the level of the depression such disorder could make someone to commit suicide. In addition, psychological harmful effect that brought by stress could be chronicle and it would last until one stops breathing. Some believes that it is the psychological stress that actually brings physical and social harm. In other words, all the harmful effects that brought by stress is psychologically, yet it is influencing our social interaction with others and physical health.
In conclusion, stress is necessary in order to live our life; stress could bring our creativity to top notch along with the immune system in our body, furthermore, it could help people to face problems and challenges that blocks their path; however, one could also see that overloaded stress could make our social interaction, such as relationship, to be hectic; it could bring our immune system weak against harmful bacteria, moreover, it might make one to develop unhealthy behaviours such as drinking, smoking and eating excessive foods; stress could create psychological disorders for many people that lasts long and have no easy way to recover. In my opinion what really matters is that how one handle the stress that blocks her or his life; depending on how one take care of that stress or how one manage the stress, the stress could bring the good effect or harmful effect. Few suggestions of dealing stress are as follows; one could plan ahead and avoid such stressful event from happening; this method allows the person to be more prepared. Another method in dealing such stressful situation is to get the priority of what to do first. This method would help one to solve the situation or problems step by step, which will help to divide the amount of the stress one might feel.
References:
Butler. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2560943/?page=1
Counseling & Wellness Center. Retrieved from https://www.counseling.ufl.edu/cwc/stress-and-college-students.aspx
Dr. Larina Kase. Retrieved from http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/stress-management/7-ways-stress-can-actually-be-good-for-you-104481
Dr. Mark Goulston. Retrieved from http://heohongtham.hubpages.com/hub/4-Positive-Effects-of-Stress
