To any observer, Laura appears to be a cheerful, wholesome college girl, but underneath her sunny exterior, stress has taken its toll on her life and caused her to grasp for control.
“When I got to college, stress took on a whole new meaning. I definitely experienced a nervous breakdown,” Laura, a sophomore at the University of Oklahoma explains reluctantly.
“I don't know if it was the weight of major life choices, massive amounts of homework, huge time expectations for practicing—I am a music major and expected to practice 8-10 hours a week—a few failed dating relationships... or all of the above. It was as though everything was spiraling out of control. I felt completely powerless.”
Laura is not alone in this response to the pressures faced by college students every day. Many students crack under the pressure of selecting a career, finding a future spouse, dealing with the idea of future debt associated with student loans, and coping with the workload.
“The way I coped was to stop eating. I remember literally thinking, ‘This is the only thing I can control. Maybe if I resist these hunger pangs and wait for them to go away, I'll feel a little more in control of my body and circumstances.’”
Ian, a shaggy-haired, tie-dye clad junior at OU, remembers being a successful, focused high school student, but the stress of career decisions took its toll and he lost his direction his sophomore year when he began to doubt his goal of becoming a chemical engineer.
“I’d always kinda thought I’d be an engineer, for like the last eight years. I didn’t really think about whether I was actually interested in it, or if I’d actually want to do it, I just was like ‘that’s what I’m going to do, so that’s what I’m going to do.’” Unfortunately for Ian, this strategy could not last for long.
“I realized that I disliked all of the classes I was taking, but I still didn’t think I hated my major.”
By the first semester of his junior year, Ian came to that realization and his academic life came to a screeching halt.
“Instead of talking to people about it, I just stopped going to class. There was one class that I kept going to. I got Fs in all the rest of my classes,” Ian laughs uncomfortably. “Rather than dealing with the stress of having to finish the semester and then figure out how to make a change, I just stopped doing everything and then I didn’t have to deal with it.”
Ian’s lack of direction late in the college game is not unique. Joining him in the struggle to define new career goals is Alex, a sophomore with big acting dreams and not much to show for them.
“I’m almost a junior and I’m not in the program I want to be in yet,” Alex says. “I’m spending all this money on college and I don’t really feel like I’ve gotten anywhere with it. If I get in the [drama] program, it’s gonna be another three and a half years before I can graduate.”
Despite having his career dreams derailed by rejection from the OU drama department, his future is not the most stressful topic on Alex’s mind.
“At the beginning of this semester when I was served an eviction notice from my apartment complex because my scholarship money didn’t come in until October. I actually got served 3 eviction notices in six months. So that was pretty stressful, I lost a lot of sleep over that.”
Insomnia aside, college students like Alex face stress factors ranging from homework to making some of the most difficult and important decisions in their lives. The future is the root of most college stress. Ian believes that certain questions plague students: “Am I going to be able to find a job? Am I going to hate what I’m doing? Is what I’m doing now really going to matter? Is what I’m doing now messing me up for life?”
These questions occur while students struggle with pressure to get the ideal college experience universities are peddling including studying abroad and spring break vacations.
These unnecessary items have a special significance to modern students. According to Ian, “if you’re not having enough fun in college, you feel like you’re doing something wrong, because college is supposed to be the best time of your life. So if you don’t have enough fun in college, you’re going to be miserable forever.”
To help prevent eternal misery, OU academic advisor Connie Divine suggests students focus on the main reason they are at school—academics. She lays out strategies for freshman in OU’s Gateway class for how to succeed in college. The main steps to good time management are setting specific goals for the different areas of life, prioritizing tasks, organizing those tasks, and using time effectively. “If you let external things control you, then you're never, you're going to have a lot of stress in your life,” Divine warns.
To take control, Divine recommends students use the many services around OU to help alleviate their stress. Career Services offers guidance about possible careers, academic advisors help keep academics manageable, Goddard Health Center offers counseling, and the university offers many scholarships and financial aid opportunities.
If students employ these services, they can find effective methods to have a productive and fun time in college. If students can reduce their stress in healthy ways, they can avoid spiraling out of control and embrace college as one of the best times of their lives, rather than just the most stressful time.
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