Nerdify Reviews 5 Tips for Managing Stress During the College Semester
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While students certainly work hard in high school, adjusting to the college workflow can be quite challenging for first-year students. Even when students learn to adapt to the heavy course loads typical of a university, as their academic career progresses into their junior and senior years, their classes become more challenging. To help students old and new deal with feeling overwhelmed, our Nerdify reviews experts have some advice below.
1. Plan Ahead
One way to make sure that you don’t have a last-minute panic about assignments you had forgotten were due is to organize all of your work well in advance. You can even start mapping out your semester during syllabus week, as professors will often give schedules noting when the big tests, assignments, and essays occur. Be sure to mark down the days of midterms and finals too, as those all happen in the same week and can accidentally be forgotten. Even if you have some of the same assignments due week-to-week, it’s still wise, say Nerdify reviews experts, to put them on your calendar so you remember them.
2. Be Realistic About Your Availability
Relating to planning ahead, it’s important that you are truthful with yourself about how much you can do in a day. We can quickly become overly ambitious by cramming too much in our days, falling victim to the “planning fallacy.” That is the psychological term for the cognitive bias we have in thinking tasks will take less time than they will actually require, leading us to snowball into falling behind as we run out of time in the day. It’s good to block out your day in your schedule, but you’ll need to think carefully about how much time it will take to get the work done that needs to be accomplished. A great way to find out how long a task will take is to time yourself the next time you complete a similar assignment, as you can use it to gauge how future projects will go, state Nerdify reviews experts.
3. Make Sure to Sleep Properly
One of the worst cycles to get into as a college student is to chronically undersleep. This might start from you not getting enough work done during the day and needing to study late into the evening, while still necessitating getting up early the next day. Since you’re tired the next day, you won’t be nearly as productive as you could otherwise be, so then you stay up late again trying to catch up. While it’s best to avoid this cycle altogether, realizing you’re getting trapped in it before it becomes a habit is essential, as many Reddit users state they can sometimes repeat this behavior for an entire semester. Be gentle with yourself and realize that you deserve sleep, no matter how productive you were or weren’t that day—learning that it will actually help you work better in the long run.
4. Get Moving
When you’re in the midst of panicking about deadlines, the idea of working out is probably one of the last things on your mind. As much as Reddit users hate to admit it, they, and science, find that exercise is an incredible stress reliever. Getting your heart pumping releases endorphins, which can help greatly improve your mood, and even help those with mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder (ADHD). Exercising in some way, whether that’s hitting the gym or just walking around, allows your mind to relax, as you don’t need to actively focus like you would reading, writing, solving math problems, etc. Stepping and getting a breath of fresh air allows your mind to rejuvenate, and you’ll be able to return to your work with a renewed perspective.
5. Chew Gum
No, really. Believe it or not, our Nerdify reviews team knows that chewing gum has been scientifically proven to help with anxiety and stress. When stressed, your brain makes your body act like it is in physical danger, even if the only actual “danger” is getting a bad grade. Reddit users remark that the act of chewing gum is like eating, and evolutionarily speaking it would make no sense to eat during life-or-death situations, so snaking on gum tricks your brain into thinking that you’re not actually in danger. Additionally, chewing gum increases the blood flow and oxygen in your brain, allowing you to think more clearly. Studies have shown, says Nerdify reviews team, that chewing gum can not only help you relieve stress before and after exams, but it will also aid your performance by helping your memory and recall of information.
