My Students’ Blog

Stress Management

By Zakary Scot Simon

Imagine someone with bad stress management. They end up getting paranoid about almost everything and have problems with upcoming tests, deadlines, presentations, and so on. They don’t know how to deal with multiple or huge things the right way. You usually don’t want to be that person, but, unfortunately, stress gets the best of us sometimes, with us usually not knowing what to do, so it can be dealt with when it does get to us. But, for those that do have bad stress management, there are indeed ways to handle it.

During two different interviews, I asked Tevita Stajduhar and Josue Salgado the same three questions. The purpose was to see what their responses would be and how they would differ from each other, with one being the person that is assumed to be good at stress management and the other assumed to be bad at stress management. 

Believe it or not, one of the best things for reducing stress is actually having a hobby. It is one of the best ways to have an outlet and be able to take a break to be able to destress.

Starting with Josue’s responses, he said the most stressful situation for him at school has been civics, and the reason for this is him possibly not having all A’s in the gradebook. With him holding his grades to such high standards, there is most likely a lot of stress that comes from doing this. He says the way he prevents a stressful situation from happening is that he takes time for himself and listens to his body and acknowledges it, saying he needs rest. Which, in this case, is indeed a good way of taking the stress away. So, as for what he said he would do to give advice to a fellow student who is stressed over an upcoming test, he said he would suggest that you study, even though it may be another stressful thing to do, but it’s something that will calm you down in the future. Because the more information you know, the less stressed you will be. He also said that you should take a break like he did, as he said earlier. Which, in the case of stress management, seems like it would be an ideal response.

Now time for Tevita’s responses. He said the most stressful situation in school for him was when Mrs. Voelker failed his Spanish project. The way he handled it was that he just had faith in hopes of his grade getting better and accepted his fate, focusing on the rest of the work for the year instead of worrying about the project. This is a very relaxed approach to a situation like this. The way he prevents a stressful situation from happening is that he walks away, doesn’t answer to it and then thinks about it after that, which is a very rational and carefree approach to this type of matter. As for what advice he would give a fellow student who is stressed about an upcoming test, he said you have to study, and however you do is how you end up doing. And, if you did badly, you’d better work on your next test, but there’s not much you can do aside from study and accept your fate with the studying you did. Yet again, this is a very rational and calm way of going about this type of matter. So, which one do you think was the person that is assumed to be good at stress management and which one is assumed to be bad at stress management? If you want to know, it will be at the end of this blog post.

Not having stress management can make it seem like you are nose-diving into a downward spiral sometimes. Now that’s not good for anyone, from student to adult or college student, because it could make day-to-day things really hard to do. The effect of this could lead to the failing of a class, the possible loss of a job, or maybe even, in some cases, something even worse. On Managing Stress by nami.org states that “When stress is frequent and intense, it can strain your body and make it impossible to function. Finding effective ways to deal is crucial to living well.”

The source also says that “stress affects your entire body, mentally as well as physically.” In the source, it states the signs of how stress physically affects someone.

It also mentions the times when you are most vulnerable to stress occurring. And, it also gives some tips as to how to go about reducing stress as well in the source.

Stress management can pretty much be used everywhere, so it does have its benefits when being used. But there are a lot of people nowadays that still don’t understand why this is an important thing to understand and be able to know how to do. On The Importance of Stress Management by helpguide.org, it stresses the importance of stress management and gives some useful tips on how to use stress management.

Even though stress management is an important overall topic for almost everyone, it can be especially difficult for students in high school or college. On School Stress Relievers for Students by verywellmind.com it talks about the common causes of stress for students and ten different ways they could try to deal with stress while in school.

I personally haven’t had a job before, but for people that currently do have jobs, it can be really hard to balance work and home life without it becoming very stressful to deal with sometimes. So, learning the equilibrium for balancing out work and home can be a huge factor in dealing with stress. On 5 Tips to Reduce Stress and Maintain Work-Life Balance, it talks about how work is one of the main sources of stress, especially for people that have a family, and five ways to deal with that stress and rebalance work and home life.

Believe it or not, one of the best things for reducing stress is actually having a hobby. It is one of the best ways to have an outlet and be able to take a break to be able to destress. On The Importance of Hobbies for Stress Relief, it talks about the health benefits of having a hobby and all the different ways having a hobby can affect how stressed you are.

As you can tell, stress management is very important. It can affect many aspects of your daily life and even deteriorate your health, if not managed properly. So, I would recommend learning to some degree how to do stress management. 

In case you are still wondering, the person that was assumed to be good at stress management was Tevita, and the person that was assumed to be bad at stress management was Josue.