You are carrying a silent heavyweight on your shoulders: grades, deadlines and impending finals. Each challenge is willingly accepted; It might be easier to drop a task, but sometimes, the challenge and stress can grow your motivation.
Stress, our body’s innate response to pressure, arises from various situations or life events—whether it’s the anxiety to excel academically or maintain thriving interpersonal relationships. A stress-free life doesn’t necessarily equate to a better one; frequently, our most significant moments of growth stem from challenges that demand us to overcome stress.
“The prevailing idea in our culture is that stress is bad,” said Daniela Kaufer to Greater Good Magazine, an associate professor at UC Berkeley who studies the biology of stress. “If you tend to have a positive attitude—a self-confident sense that you can get through a rough period—you’re more likely to have a healthy response than if you perceive stress as catastrophic.”
This commitment to excellence exemplifies how stress can propel individuals towards honing essential skills for navigating future experiences. This heightened performance results in the manifestation of “good stress” or eustress.
This mindset is much needed in the intense academic environment at Northwood, where too many students have crumbled from the pressure to take unreasonable measures to get diplomas from prestigious institutions like the Ivies and UCs. This pressure manifests in various forms, pushing students to tackle challenging coursework and a myriad of extracurricular activities.
“Students are stressed year round and many of our students and their parents have high expectations for themselves,” said Northwood counselor Kate West. “In finals, this stress ramps up more.”
This “normal” yet imbalanced workload can get overwhelming, especially considering that the teenage brain is less developed in stress response regulation as compared to adults. The key to overcoming prolonged stress is understanding your worries and stress, transforming them into sources of motivation and avenues for improvement.
“There was a time I had several music auditions coming up, but I didn’t feel very prepared for them,” senior Audrey Lee said. “It was stressful, but it motivated me to practice consistently and make the best of each day.”
On a piece of paper, take a moment to jot down the things bothering you. Seeing your concerns take shape on paper offers a chance to stop some thoughts that are the result of your overactive imagination. Then, choose one specific concern from your list and develop actionable behaviors to address and resolve it.
In the search for success, stress is unavoidable. However, it’s about learning to deal with stress in a new way, changing it into a dynamic force for personal progress and using stress’s energy for success rather than avoiding it.
