School stress

Stress is the feeling of being under too much mental or emotional pressure. Impacts of stress on you include:

• Tiredness
• Mental upset
• Negative thoughts

Stress sometimes happens without a clear cause, but it often is a result of something in your life, like school or college.

Take action: Most people feel stressed sometimes and some people find stress helpful or even motivating. Find out more about stress from the NHS.

What causes school stress?

There are many causes to school stress:

• Lack of sleep
• Too much work or homework
• Different routine
• No support
• No time to relax
• Having learning disabilities

School pressures can cause worry or even to panic. But if stress is so bad you feel you should not choose further education in your life you need to take action.

Take action: It’s important to recognise stress due to school before it gets worse and turns into anxiety or panic attacks. If you think that you are stressed because of school, inform your teachers and parents, or school health nurse.

This video helps you understand stress from different people's points of view and what causes it for them. Students discuss their future plans and how much pressure they have from people around them.

How do you manage school stress?

There are many useful ways to manage school stress:

• Getting enough sleep so your brain is ready to take in new information and it feels aware of what’s going on.
• Making or having time to relax so you and your brain can forget about everything. This will make you have a better mood and make you feel more happier mentally.
• Socialising with people around you and participating in activities will also make you feel more positive.

How you manage stress in school is different for everyone, but a helpful way that has helped me and my friends, is having a schedule that tells you what to do when. This also helps us do our homework and gives us time to focus on many subjects. We just need to stick to the schedule, spend a maximum of 40 mins on each subject and take regular breaks.

Take action: If you still can’t get rid of the stress or if you still find it difficult to cope with, then tell your doctor or your parents to get help. Your school nurse will also be able to give useful advice.

How do activities help?

Activities are very helpful when it comes to stress, as they distract you from other things like school and keep your brain refreshed and reserved. Short breathing exercises or colouring have been proved to be very therapeutic. There are more tips to help you:

• Meditation or yoga to relax
• Eating well to give you energy
• Watching TV
• Socialising with family/friends
• Thinking positively
• Setting goals

Take action: You can find a lot of activities on the Activities Oxfordshire website. 

Good stress vs bad stress

Stress comes in different forms. Stress can also have a positive impact on you. Good stress is when you look at stress in a different way. You still get stressed but it motivates you to try harder. This could have a good impact on a student as they could get better in their studies. However, bad stress is stressing too much about something, and not knowing what to do, which makes it worse.

Getting too stressed? Many schools take action if a student is stressed and help them with their studies. This could be by helping the student with the work a little bit at a time or also by getting advice from the school nurse.

By Work Experience Student Nimra Ahmed