Stress

Stress affects everyone, but we each have unique triggers and reactions. It can be caused by overwork, financial difficulties, missing home or emotional upheavals. Stress can lead you to feel overwhelmed and make it difficult to learn new information and work productively. It can also affect you physically, making it difficult to concentrate on your studies.

Mild stress, like just before a sporting event or an exam, can help people perform at their best. But when stress becomes more intense, causes distress, lasts for a longer time and interferes with daily living, then it's a problem.

The Counselling and Psychological Services team offers a great service supporting students.  Consider booking an appointment with them.

Think about how and why you get stressed and who you can reach out to for help. Click on the links below to reveal specific advice.

    • Reduce your workload during semester by deciding which activities can wait till semester break.
    • Be sure your goals are realistic within the timeframes you set yourself. Academic Skills can help with this. You can make an appointment with Academic Skills to help.
    • Start working on assessments and revision early in semester in order to make your workload as manageable as possible.
    • Using tools such as an assignment planner, semester planner or weekly planner can help you organise your time and things to do in order to maintain a sense of control. Academic Skills has some helpful tips and videos on time and task management to help.

    • Relaxation techniques such as breathing and muscle relaxation can help. For example, breathing in for four counts and out for six counts can help you focus on your breath and slow your heart rate down.
    • Active learning techniques, which involve transforming material you are trying to learn into another form, are effective for exam preparation. They include methods such as creating summaries, visual representations, glossaries and diagrams of the information you are trying to learn, or discussing it with others. This webpage on active learning includes some helpful advice and more specific strategies.
    • Managing your time can help you manage exam stress.  Academic Skills offers some tips on how to create an effective revision program and use a weekly planner to organise your time. This video demonstrating how to use a semester planner can help you stay on top of your workload throughout the semester.  Most of all, begin your revision early to feel very well prepared.
    • Try visualising yourself succeeding in the exam. This can get your mind and body ready to perform well and increase your confidence.

    • Be alert to any situations during class that trigger your stress. This may include things such as too many people talking, information presented too quickly, claustrophobia, fear of large groups, past negative experiences, or being asked to speak. When you feel stressed, take a note of what was happening at the time to identify your triggers.
    • Have a private conversation with your tutor and let them know that you sometimes feel stressed in class. Consider agreeing on a signal with your tutors, such as thumbs up, thumbs down or a small wave, to discretely indicate how you're feeling and to signal that you wish to leave the room.
    • Try visualisation exercises where you imagine yourself confidently engaging in activities.

    • Identify what kinds of conversations cause you more stress. For example, speaking with a tutor, making friends.
    • Consider techniques you’ve used in the past to help calm yourself or any advice or support you’ve sought regarding this feeling. What works for one person may not work for someone else, so find a way to calm yourself that works best for you. For example, imagine you are behind a glass screen and breathing calmly.
    • Try a grounding technique where you make yourself aware of your environment and bring yourself back into the present moment.
    • Counselling and Psychological Services (CAPS) offer a range of guided mindfulness exercises to help.