Has your student ever struggled with trying to finish an assignment at the last minute or find themselves falling behind with course materials? Stress is something that everyone experiences at some point in their lives. The key is to not let it affect your daily lives. Having been through high school, undergraduate, and doing graduate school under the pandemic, here are some things that I’ve learned that work for me. I’ll be sharing 5 tips to help manage stress from a grad student’s point of view.
- Establishing School Life Balance
We are all busy individuals trying to survive in this world and sometimes we need to stop to evaluate what is important to us. Creating a healthy balance between school, work, and self-care will help give you peace of mind. This can mean carving out an hour in between studying to watch your favorite Netflix show or taking a nice relaxing bath. Having the time to do things you enjoy will help take some of the stress and burden off your shoulders.
- Schedule Your Week
This is probably one of my favorite things to do that helps me keep my life together. If you decide to do one thing from this list, let it be scheduling and planning out your week. Go pick out a cute planner from Target, if you don’t already have one and spend some time on Sunday night writing down everything on your plate for the upcoming week. You can write anything from assignment due dates, appointments, basically anything that you want to keep yourself accountable for. You will find that having your week planned out ahead of time will not only increase productivity, but reduce stress at the same time.
- Get Enough Rest
Going to sleep at a reasonable time is probably something that many of us are guilty of not doing. Whether it’s because we are busy pulling all-nighters or watching just one more episode of a series, the reality is sleep is just as important as everything else on our to-do list, if not more. If you are getting 6-8 hours of sleep every night, you will wake up feeling refreshed and ready to start your day. This will help you get through the day with the energy needed to get through school and accomplish your daily tasks. I know this may be a difficult habit to change, but once you do, you’ll feel like a completely different person.
- Take Things One Day at a Time
In order to have time for things that we love doing, we need to allow ourselves to be okay with taking things in bite-size pieces to keep from burning out. It’s okay to take a break after completing everything on the list for the day. I used to be guilty of checking off everything from my list and wanting to move onto the next day. This not only added unnecessary stress to my life, but took away time to rest and be okay with what I accomplished that day. Over time, I learned how to be satisfied with the progress I’ve made so far and will continue to be mindful of that as life goes on.
- Eat Healthy and Stay Active
Keeping your body healthy is super important. Being mindful of what you are putting in it can take some time to get used to, but I encourage you to try it. If you’re feeling hungry for a snack, instead of picking up a bag of chips, try carrot sticks. A tip to creating healthy habits is to choose a food with a similar texture to the one that you are craving. This will help train your mind to concentrate on that, rather than the food itself. You can still have your cheat days of course! Staying active is another important aspect to relieving stress. Even something like going out on a short walk or riding your bike is good to clear your mind, while getting fresh air.
I hope you found these 5 tips about managing stress useful. If you have any questions please don’t stress yourself out and reach out to us to schedule a consultation to discuss your student’s progress.