You’ve heard it before. High school is the easiest time of your life. They’re only mostly right. High school is stressful, and college as much so. To prevent stress from becoming a daily part of your education, you should find simple things to do. Stopping your brain from turning into mush will help you study, too. You’ve heard it all before, but here are some things you may not have.
1. Candles aren’t allowed in dorms, but now there are aromatherapy USBs. Thinkgeek.com has a USB-powered aromatherapy oil burner stick that can be used to help you de-stress and relax even while you’re writing your papers at 4 am in the library.
2. Instead of emailing it to yourself, use DropBox (or similar Net-based storage). By uploading your drafts, notes, syllabi, and other important files onto DropBox, Box.net, or even Google Docs, you can access your paper and due dates from any computer with Internet access. Although this isn’t a traditional way to soothe stress, it will help prevent it.
3. One is just enough. Credit cards are an extremely unnecessary source of stress. Any student ages 16 to 24 really only needs one. Although you shouldn’t use it for regular shopping, you can use it to pay for gas every month, which helps you build your credit score. Just remember to pay it off and you won’t have to worry about huge credit card debt when you’re studying for midterms.
4. Create a survival kit. As I mentioned in a previous post, having a school survival kit will prevent you from ever coming to class completely unprepared. Keep this bag in your purse or backpack.
5. Spend money on food. If you’re on campus during most of your day, you’ll probably need food (unless you’re a cyborg). If you purchase a meal plan that gives you a limited amount of meals per week, you save money and prevents overeating or spending. Overeating can cause you to stress even more and make your body susceptible to sickness. Overspending can do some real damage to your wallet and leave you wondering how to make ends meet, which is not something you want to be thinking of if you have an organic chemistry test soon.
6. Gor for a hard drive. Yes, USBs are extremely useful, but they can’t back up ALL of your songs, videos, and files that you’ve ever owned. An external hard drive is a priceless (but affordable) investment in your education and iTunes purchases and hence must be included in your laptop accessories list. If anything happens to your computer, you can have this as your back up, leaving you with a less stressful computer repair.
7. Smart phones may actually make you smarter. Although this is NOT necessary, I’ve personally found it to be useful. A smart phone syncs with your e-mail accounts, your social media, and your other accounts. This comes in handy when you want to check that e-mail from your teacher. You know, the one that changes the due date of the 12-page assignment from today to tomorrow? These phones can help you meet deadlines, send e-mails, and save you time all while you walk to class.
Although you may have heard of these stress-prevention suggestions, it’s important for your education that you adopt a few of them. Stress may help you work and meet deadlines, but too much can be detrimental to your scholarly success. Make sure that you find ways to prevent mental exhaustion and worry before it gets too late in the semester. Your grades (and probably your roommates) would thank you for it.
