Stress on College Student

Nguyen Nguyen

Professor Mary Cudahy

English 908

Nov 29, 2017

                                                Stress on college student

        “More than 75 percent of all mental health conditions begin before the age of 24” according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness ("College Student"). From this statistic, what we can understand is that college is a time when people fell stress. Indeed, stress is a major problem for college students throughout the United States. Stress can be brought on by a number of causes and leads to many life changing issues.

A significant percentage of college students spend their time on campus with a lot of stress because of three main reasons such as a busy schedule, relationship matters and family background. The busy schedule is one of the most significant causes of stress because it requires students to balance their class time, assignments, tests, projects and extra activities. Students who just joined college from high school find it challenging to deal with college life because they just left high school, and they are expected to be more independent and self sufficient. Moreover, college life introduces students to new responsibilities in that they are expected to determine classes of their own volition, making decisions about the direction they want to follow in life. In addition, some students are parents with kids, and they have to create time for studying, and they find it hard to arrange their time for both studying and taking care of their family. Therefore, students are stuck in a busy schedule. Another factor that contributes to stress in college life are relationship matters. Many students left high school and they have little knowledge about relationship issues. For example, it is not easy for some people to make friends because they don’t take time to know other people, and it may end up in a confrontation. Moreover, college students may get stressed easily because they may feel lonely and depressed by living without family beside them. Every relationship has a conflict at some point; students with good resolution skills can avoid stress in life. Moreover, family background is another possible issue that causes stress in students. For those students who were born in a low income family, money becomes the most important thing to think about. They may worry to much about tuition for college because they can’t afford it. Another possible reason student with poor financial background are stressed, is they compare themselves with students who are from well to do families.

Knowing the causes of stress is important, but understanding the effects of stressed is even more significant. There are three main effects of stressed that impact students such as physical problems, mental health problems, and academic performance. First, students will get many serious physical effects because of stress. For example, when people get stress, they feel like they don’t want to eat; therefore, lack of nutrition and being malnourished is a serious physical problem for them. They tend not to take care of themselves, so their healthy behaviors decrease, and they may get sick easily. Second, there are mental health problems caused by frequent anxiety. In fact, people who have been stressed are easily to be upset and unhappy. They also tend to live alone, rarely communicating with people. Moreover, stressed students may turn to drug abuse as a way to avoid ruminating on problems surrounding them. Drugs are not cheap, and using drugs will cost a lot of money; therefore, those people will turn in to criminal activities to find money for drugs. Worst of all, suicide is considered a real concern. As reported in the National Alliance on Mental Illness, “Seven percent of college students have “seriously considered suicide” during the past year” ("College Student"). Finally, going to school with a lot of stress makes students tired, so they start missing classes, performing poorly in class, and even dropping classes. All college students are going to school for education to go into the fields they would like to work in. However, overwhelming with stress makes it more difficult for students to go on their career path.