Nate Mollway, junior in FAA, feels overwhelmed.

He said that he typically has two to five midterms throughout the course of two weeks and will study an extra four hours a day during this time.

As he and other students are preparing for their midterms, it is important that they know how to manage their stress and are aware of all of the resources on campus.

Jennifer Carson, health educator at McKinley Health Center, is in charge of putting on stress management workshops for student dorms, clubs, Greek life and more. These workshops are primarily to teach students how to manage their stress in healthy ways. They also have several other workshops, such as nutrition or fitness, all of which are available by request on their website.

She recommended several resources outside of the workshops. McKinley offers individual appointments to talk about stress, as well as online breathing exercises and stress relief packs towards the end of the school year around finals week.

Carson gave several tips for how to deal with stress.  Although “what works for one might not work for another,” she does recommend managing your time, eating well, getting lots of sleep before a midterm and taking breaks in between studying.

Mollway said that he prefers to take long walks when stressed or clean his room so that the environment for studying is better suited.

Carson said McKinley offers so much because college can be a very stressful time in a person’s life. She said that stress can be normal and that students are often worried about the competitiveness of finding a job, as well balancing family and friends.

There is also an RSO called Stress Management Peers, a group of students across all majors that just want to find ways to relax in college.

Rebecca Stolberg, graduate student in LAS and member of Stress Management Peers, said that many students show up for club meetings with an “I need this” attitude. 

Stolberg said that there are two types of stress: “you stress” and “distress.”  

“You stress” can actually be good, she said. It can motivate you to study for a test that you want to do well on. However, “distress” can be negative. It can lead you to procrastinating with Netflix for several hours when you should be studying.

The club aims to eliminate the “distress “ in several students’ lives by putting on several events.  For example, this October they will be having a “Positivi-tree” at the Union where students can write positive messages to others.

They will also be having another event called “Break Away from Stress” at the Student Dining and Residential Programs Building in which students can relax and talk to other students over fun activities like making stress balls.

Stolberg and the rest of the Stress Management Peers’ main goal is to make students less stressed so that they can “maximize their student potential.”

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