Surviving College: Strategies for Success and Stress Management

Since the transition from grade school to middle school, students have been taught about college and how to be prepared for it: study hard, participate in extra curricular activities, and always do your best. Many high school students, towards the end of their senior year, have college applications sent in, scholarships applied for, and likely some money in the bank. When they receive their acceptance letters, however, many are not fully prepared for the years of college ahead of them and what all life after high school will ask of them. Many problems that students encounter in high school can transfer with them to college, and get piled up with new responsibilities as well. Future college students will have a better experience if they fight

The college student stereotype is to be up the night before the final studying until 2am, but that is an unhealthy habit. If a student is still studying at 2am, they are less likely to have learned the material, and they won’t get enough sleep to allow their brain to retain it. “Chunking,” however, makes it so that a student’s brain deeply understands the problem and will not forget it overnight. The process asks that the student practices with types of problems and concepts over time so to create a concrete connection to the material in their mind. This is helpful for college student’s especially, as most finals and midterms are comprehensive, making the older material you learned easier to bring back to memory when tested over it later. Another technique that would be helpful to new college students is “recall,” bringing back the new lessons recently learned when doing an idle activity such as walking to class (“10 Rules”). College campuses are known for being large, and sometimes overwhelming. Many students may not use a car to navigate the

In high school, students’ stress is minimal because many real-life problems such as bills, jobs, and deadlines, are not as big of a deal. However, in college, all of these stressors are demanding attention at the same time and are amplified in the new setting. According to Sarath Nonis, “time constraints, financial strain, academic workload, and interpersonal difficulties with faculty, peers, and significant others contributes to stress for college students” (Nonis). College is a time for new experiences, and many students experience new social circles and opportunities to have less-supervised fun in their downtime. New relationships, or the lack of, can cause stress among students. This is only added onto the pile of other stress that college students are dealing with and must cope with in order to be successful. Nonis states that students should be given more help to lower their stress levels, possibly by the university personnel who might have better resources (Nonis). Like in high school, students should be encouraged to reach out to other people while experiencing all of this stress, instead of coping with it all on their own and eventually just crumbling at the deadline. Along with helpful study habits, advice from peers can be combined to make college a less stressful and more successful