Stress Survey

This article on stress from the New York Times shows the results of a survey conducted on 200,000 freshmen college students. The survey found that the number of students that rated themselves ““below average” in emotional health rose.” (Lewin 1) Also, the number of students that said they were good with their mental health state went down to 52 percent from 64 percent in 1985. Counselors at colleges say that they think this is because the increasing number of loans students must take out, the fact that many more parents are unemployed, and because they have been predicted to not do as well as their parents. They also find that women are the ones who are more likely to go to counselors for stress. This is because men are taught to hold in their emotions and because they usually find ways to relieve stress. These ways include exercising or maybe even doing something dumb.

            I think that most people that I have seen, including myself, have dealt with stress well. There are always people who don’t keep up with their work, or keep organized. These are the people that you will see running around with a scared look on their face because they have forgot an assignment was due today, or that a big paper is due tomorrow. I find that I get stressed whenever I have multiple tests in one day, or when I have two or three papers due in a week. But for me there is always some stress because I can never forget about the large projects that are coming due. These always hang on me like a weight. I know that when I get stressed because of things in college I get mad. This is because sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me why some professors assign such stupid assignments. If you would like to read more about the stress survey conducted on freshmen students go to http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/education/27colleges.html?_r=1 .