8 Common Reasons for Stress in Students

A detailed article exploring eight of the most common reasons why you may experience periods of stress during your life as a student. 

Pursuing academics and achieving your dreams as a student is never a walk in the park. After centuries of people believing that the student population is the least affected by any stress, it is now understood that stress is a crisis that affects people at all levels, including students. Prior to joining college or university, you most likely believed that the only task that you would undertake was to study, which was most likely not going to be stressful on your part since you are accustomed to working hard in school. However, you forget that there are many expectations, and you have to fulfil them to become successful. For example, as you write your academic essays, you will be expected to ensure that you conduct sufficient research and base your information on reliable sources. As you do this, you are most likely going to use parts of the information in your papers, which may be considered as plagiarism. Unless you can use great tools like the Peachy Essay free plagiarism checker, you are most likely going to unintentionally submit a plagiarized paper which may have its consequences. Apart from this, many other factors may contribute to stress on your side and other students. In this article, we explore eight common reasons for stress in students. 

When you are experiencing high levels of stress, it is most likely that you will face other issues such as depression, behavioural problems, anxiety, and irritability. As a student, this can be very dangerous for you since it leads to other academic issues such as the fear of failure, inability to concentrate, and a negative evaluation of the future. In worst-case scenarios, students have been found to drop out of school or even commit suicide in some extreme situations where stress levels are unbearable. Stress in students is also associated with other risky habits such as unprotected sexual activities, increased consumption of alcohol and drugs, poor eating habits, physical inactivity, and poor sleeping habits. It is always advisable for you as a student to find ways to avoid stress and take measures to combat it when it happens. When you are stressed out in school, it is most likely that you will not be able to perform well academically. To better understand why students get stressed, it is important to explore the common reasons that stress occurs. By definition, stress is viewed as every circumstance or event that threatens to disrupt your daily functioning and causes you to make adjustments. Let us explore eight of the most common reasons why you may feel stressed during your academic life. 

Relationships

As a student, the connections that you have with other people may be a cause of stress. These connections may be through blood, adoption, marriage and other legal ways. These relationships may be a burden on you and others, and you can easily become a victim of relationship abuse. This stress in the relationship can be in the form of money, sexual, physical and other forms where the relationship generally affects your ability to concentrate in class. For example, you may have a girlfriend that constantly demands money which means that you need to pick extra shifts at work which may limit your ability to study. Other forms of relationship conflicts that may lead to stress include family problems, conflict with your roommates, working with individuals that you do not know, among others. You may be forced to stress yourself over these issues, and you may start to think a lot about ways to solve these issues. This can cause you to be distracted or have divided attention from your academic work. It may not seem very obvious to you, but the relationships that you form may become a major source of stress for you as a student. 

Change in the living environment

In most cases, you will need to change your living environment once you transit from secondary to tertiary education. This means that you will be needed to leave behind a place that you are used to and move to a new environment where you will most likely be living with different individuals. When you move away from home to this new environment, you may find that some of the things that you were used to are not readily available. You may also find that you will have to share your living space with people that you had never met. All these factors combined can increase your stress levels since this is a great change and needs you to adapt. You will also bump into new faces on campus as well as disorders from roommates which may create a tensed experience. Unless you are able to adjust to this new environment properly, you may feel stressed, and you may even feel homesick. 

Adjusting to new rules and academic demands

Life as a student is not easy, and you will be charged with a huge amount of responsibilities and academic demands that you will need to fulfil to become successful. For example, you will be responsible for all your actions, and you will need to attend class constantly. When you fail to attend your classes on a regular basis, you will most likely get stressed since it will be almost impossible to keep up with your peers. You will also need to learn how to use new writing tools such as the Peachy Essay free plagiarism checker to check all papers that you write since you will be required to submit plagiarism-free papers. All these rules and academic demand can have a toll on you as a student and increase your stress levels. In some circumstances, you will also need to find a job while still pursuing your studies that can lead to a heavy academic load that is bound to stress you further. All this requires adjustment, and you will need to work extra hard to balance school and work.  

Financial constraints

This is one of the most common problems that a student needs to handle and one of the greatest stress factors during your years in school. When you fall behind on paying your bills, it becomes extremely stressful for you. Students mainly depend on the small amount of money that they receive as allowances and probably student loans. In most cases, this money will not be enough to cater for all your needs and to survive, and you will probably need to combine your studies with a part-time job. Although this will help you gain some experience for the future and support yourself financially, it also exerts more pressure on you and may cause you more stress. When you pick up a part-time job to support your financial needs, you will not have enough time to study for your quizzes or exams, and you may also be forced to miss many lessons. By the end of the day, you may feel worn out or tired, which may have a negative effect on your performance. All these issues cause you to feel extremely stressed, and in some cases, you may feel like giving up. 

Health issues

As a student, problems with your health may become a major cause of concern because bad health will cause a lot of damage to your life. Such problems will cause you a huge amount of stress, and the stress may even contribute to worsen your condition and add stress to the injury. In instances where you fall sick, you are generally not able to perform, and you will most likely miss out on many things that are important to your life. Healthcare is also expensive, and you are most likely going to spend a considerable amount of money trying to nurse yourself into good health. When you are stressed, you may also develop other symptoms such as stomach aches, headaches, chest pains, elevated blood pressure, and sleeping disorders. It is also evident that stress will bring on or worsen certain symptoms and diseases which will further act to make your student experience worse. Although it is difficult, you should always ensure to take good care of your health in order to ensure that you do not suffer from any health conditions that may lead you to feel distressed. 

Increased class workload

College is a period where you will need to work extra hard, and you will find that your workload may significantly increase as you go on. This increased workload is most likely going to stress you up in the sense that you will need to do more than you can handle. You may end up getting frustrated and feel unable to focus and think straight. You will need to change your schedule in a bid to meet with the workload and score good grades which in most cases will feel very inconveniencing. When the tasks are too many for you, you will find it impossible to adapt, and you may end up messing up. In some cases, you will have many different assignments to handle after a long day of work which will leave you feeling confused. When you are handling many classes, and each of the classes is highly demanding, it becomes very stressful for you since you will not have enough time to handle all the work that is assigned to you. Unless you can get professional help from great companies such as Peachy Essay, you will face endless challenges trying to get all your tasks completed to perfection, which is a major cause of stress. 

Inability to improve grades

Like many other students, it is your desire to excel in your studies and score high grades that can impress your parents and peers. High grades are associated with success, and when you feel that you are not able to improve your grades, you are most likely going to feel extremely stressed. In cases where you will feel like you deserve a higher grade but end up scoring lower than you expected, you are most likely going to feel discouraged, and it may end up killing your motivation. When you have spent many sleepless nights studying for a given paper and end up scoring lower grades, you may find yourself in a bad position where you think too much about the things that you failed to do as you studied. At the end of the day, you may feel extremely stressed, and you may never be able to do anything right again. In some severe circumstances, you may start missing classes just because you feel like you cannot do well in a given subject. 

Procrastination 

As a student, you are probably very guilty of this attitude where you put off getting something done until the very last minute. It is a common and well known saying that procrastination is a thief of time. When you avoid doing a task when it needs to get accomplished and instead engage in more pleasurable activities, you are procrastinating. You choose to complete less critical errands rather than the important ones and in doing so, put off important assignments until the very last minute. When you do this, you may lose interest in getting a task done which later leads to stress since you will be forced to think about how to get it done when the deadline is extremely close. 

The academic life is filled with many challenges that may, at times, overcome the ability of the student to attain success. As a student, you are most likely going to be exposed to many stressful factors and conditions that may affect your quality of life. It is therefore very important for each one of us to understand the things that may stress us as we pursue our studies and find the most suitable ways to overcome stress.