[Gaius]

This semester is awful. So many presentations and projects and papers and I don't have nearly enough time to do that and also walk home, eat dinner, sleep, shower, and do housework, and forget spending time with my friends or my boyfriend or doing anything creative for personal reasons. All I want to do is sit down and write or draw or go for a walk and take some pictures of the trees or work on the board game I'm designing, but I don't have time for that. I miss school before my education classes started, when I was only taking math classes. Now I feel like everything is really time-consuming and completely useless. I don't know if I really want to be a teacher. I don't know what I want to be. I just don't want everything I do to feel like a chore.

How do you cope with overwhelming stress?

[Liena]

Don't be afraid to take a break, that's for sure, I had a similar problem while going for graphic arts, all my classes seemed to pile up, and I almost got lost in it. Just break away and do something you enjoy for an hour at most, and return to the school work. Maybe have the hour for a nice long shower or a powernap. Believe me it helped me out. As for what your trying to go in, yes it's a lot of work, I have seen friends that had to write reports that reached about twenty pages. Most they said they would do is stop, shower or eat something while watching tv so that they wouldn't stress out. If this field isn't what you think you want, re-evaluate yourself, and see what you could be more interested in. I tried to study to be an art teacher, but I found graphic arts more up my alley.

[Lucid:]

I once heard a saying that there are three things a person wants in college: Good grades, sleep, and a social life, and that you can only pick two. Sometimes it's more true than others, but I think taking time for yourself is very important. No matter how busy my semester is, I don't study on friday nights. That's weekend/date night/game time for me, and nothing's going to stop me. Taking breaks in the middle of studying also helps a lot. I feel better working on things when I know I can reward myself regularly.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Definately don't cut yourself off from the things you like to do. I used to do that because I felt if I did anything it should be school work and I often ended up sitting and doing nothing because I would burn out on school but feel bad about doing anything else. I took to taking walks or sitting and painting for a while to refresh my mind.

I found I was the most stressed when I wasn't being productive, those moments when I would just sit and stare at the textbook and not get anywhere. I had to remindn myself that if I wasn't getting anywhere with school work, then I may as well do something else until I can focus on it again. It was better than sitting and fretting.

One thing i did do that helped was to take a wall calender and mark off all my assignment due dates with coloured tabs for each course so I could see which assinments were coming up week by week. I found a wall calender better than a dayplanner for that because I could see farther into the future with a glance. One thing that also helped to keep in mind is to ignore the stuff that hasn't formally been assigned yet. I don't know about you but I always got a sheet with all my assignment due dates on it at the beginning of the year and they used to stress me out a lot until I remembered that some of them havne't even been mentoined in class yet adn I made myself ignore them which helped with my perception of the work load.

Do you have an idea of how fast you read or write? I found budgeting time helped for reading or large papers. Writng a paper nearly always took me one hour per page, writing and proofreading included, so I would make sure I had that amount of time to write something out. Studying was the same: it nearly always took me one hour to cover 10 pages of material, including notes and re-reads and such. With that I was able to get a good schedule for myself and time manage a little better.

Any of that help much? I finished my degree and have a fair idea of how much stress you are probably feeling right now. If possible, work out a study schedule so that you don't even have to look at a book for one day a week. My counsellor told me that and I would take one day a week and often one night as well from studying and it really helped manage stress. I did that since first year all the way through to fourth. Best advice I ever got. :)

[Gaius]

Based on all of your suggestions, I think the problem is that I am by nature a very random and chaotic person. As such, I find it hard to adapt to a strict routine. But given the circumstances, not adapting will be much harder. I am going to have to begin managing my time more than a few hours in advance.

And, Quiet, that's another problem; I read and write very slowly. The 700-word journal entries I've been writing for my education psychology class have taken upwards of four hours to do. Is there any way to train that skill, I wonder?

[Liena]

I know the feeling, I was also quite spontaneous, and wasn't much for routine, but I found out I had to adapt, and do what I had to do to make things work out. There are ways to train certain skills but again, it develops over time. For me when I studied, I had a problem of retaining information so I would train myself to memorize one section each night and then study the whole thing three days before the test. It actually helped. I passed with bs each time. :x Sometimes you have to find something affective to help you stick to it.

[Lucid:]

One of my friends posted a video about the science of procrastination on facebook yesterday. I thought it was interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nBwf...&feature=share

I know procrastination isn't your problem, but maybe some of the tips will help you manage your time. I think the timer-reward system is a good idea.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Originally Posted by Gaius

And, Quiet, that's another problem; I read and write very slowly. The 700-word journal entries I've been writing for my education psychology class have taken upwards of four hours to do. Is there any way to train that skill, I wonder?

That is just practice unfortunately. The more you do it, the better you get. I've taken lots of writing intensive courses, keep journals, and write for fun, so I can adapt pretty easily to skimpy or large word counts, though it doesn't always guarantee a good mark, especially if the teacher knows you are being unneccesarily wordy or skimpy.

One thing that I found that helped was to break an assignment down into tiny pieces. For instance, for your 700 word journal, break it down into things you want to talk about, or half to, and then divide the word count by the topics. It's still the same number, but I always found it easier to write 150-200 words on four specific topics than 700 words on one general one. If you find yourself going overcount on one topic, then you know you have some leeway to undercut another.

One thing that is always good to know is how particular your teaher is. When he or she asks for a 700 word thing, do they want 701, or can you get away with 675?


Never really thought of myself as having many routines but there were things that I'd do each day that keep the stress level managed. The trick is to know how much "routine" you can stand. It's one thing to day "some time today I need to read 20 pages of Frankenstein" and another to designate a specific time slot to do it in.

Also, as annoying as it can be, sometimes one has to prioritize and just accept that some stuff is just not going to get done. I took several courses on novels that averaged about 5 novels each. I read, on average, 3 and 5 for each. 'I'm sorry sir, I love your course, but this Anthropolgy paper worth 40% of my grade is more important than reading the entirey of Brave New World.'

Of course I should add that these tricks and things helped for me because I am aware that when I'm am stressed, the best way to relieve it is to do something productive. If that means spending the next five hours grinding my way through a textbook then so be it. The best de-stresser ever was to have my homework or school for the day done with time enough to do something before going to bed.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

I suppose, that it might also help to be less detailed for a moment and mention something else. Talk to your fellow students when you have the chance. I'm not a social butterfly but when the opportunity arrived, such as in a group or if there was a pizza social or something, I would try and talk to people a little. When I started at a small college I was pulling in straight A's. When I transferred to a large university I crashed and burned and my marks plummetted and it upset me greatly. It wasn't until I took a few minutes to chat about deadlines with some friends my roomate had invited over (they started the conversation) that I felt better. I learned that a lot of people in the same year as me were having similar problems and could readily sympathize, and I found out that I was actually doing relatively well. It was a great relief to me and helped me settle better while I finished my degree.

[Tiva]

One of My teachers gives us only take home tests and quizzes on Fridays. I find it easier to sit there and do it in another class that doesn't really require my attention because I work all weekend. If you have a cheese class that doesn't require you to pay a lot of attention use it to your advantage and do other things in it. I have 3 classes that don't take attendance and two of them are cheese classes for me (A low level anthropology and a cultural Anthropology class) If I have a really pressing paper to work on I will go to that class with my laptop or that homework and state that I am going to just sit through the class.

Right now I am in my Jazz class getting ready to start on my Physics take home quiz and I plan on finishing the Test in my cheese Anthro class on monday. Also if you have a one hour break for lunch get your text book on tape or the power points from class and while eating just watch the power point before class if they post it before hand. If you know the basic material it is a lot easier to get the finer details with the teacher in front of you.

If the problem is math there are online youtube videos on math for dummies, I watched alot of them for calculus.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Heh. I called those "sleeper courses" myself. I usually used those to zone out in and get something of a mental break for the day.

I would skip classes on occasion for courses where I knew that daily attendence wasn't as important for keeping up. It didn't hurt to miss an english class or two, especially if it was on a topic I was already familiar with or on reading I had done, but missing a language class would be a problem because so much was dependent on being there to hear the instruction and information from the teacher.