Student Stress Levels

By Ruby Lemley

Final exams are rapidly approaching as the year comes to a close, and as students manage preparation for exams, projects, and papers on top of current homework, burnout season is thriving. In an attempt to measure the average stress levels, potential causes, and effects on students, I created and conducted a student stress level survey which was taken by students throughout AECHS. There were 91 total participants, consisting of 30 freshman, 27 sophomores, 17 juniors, and 16 seniors. I asked various questions asking about perceived causes of stress, feelings, and actions in daily life.

Starting off strong, the first multiple choice question asked about the main cause of stress to assess what part of school life, among jobs, homework, attendance, exams, social life, and sports, create the most tension in daily life. The overwhelming majority answer for this question was homework, with 85.6% of respondents choosing this. Exams followed with 61.1%, and attendance and social life tied closely as the third most common answers. These answers suggest that workload play a large part in causing stress among students, and balancing heavy workload while attempting to prepare sufficiently for final exams is a struggle to many. 

The next question focused on work-life/personal life balance, and results were pretty evenly distributed, with all answer choices ranging from 11.2-27%. This result was not particularly unexpected, as many students don't yet have jobs, and many underclassmen regularly see their friends and nurture their social lives during school hours. 

A common symptom of stress and burnout is the degradation of work quality as a consequence of lower mental functioning, fatigue, and brain fog. I asked the question of how often work quality suffered as a result of stress, as if the student body of AECHS is regularly stressed, grades and exams scores might average lower. On a scale of rarely - very much, the majority of students answered sometimes and frequently (26.7% and 37.8% respectively). Fortunately, this does not suggest that many students are performing very poorly on a regular basis due to stress, but at the same time, the majority of students are feeling strain and slight degradation in the quality of their regular assignments. 

Chronic stress and burnout may also be major factors in both long and short term physical health, and the effects of stress can frequently manifest physiologically. Excessive stress may cause headaches, fatigue, nausea, insomnia, and other symptoms that in excess or sustained over a long period of time, may contribute to significant health problems. 43.3% of participants reported that they frequently deal with physiological symptoms of stress, with 15.6% dealing with them very often. This is a large cause for concern, as frequently or very often having physiological symptoms of stress may lead to health concerns, negatively impact grades and scores in school, and may generally decrease quality of life.

Finally, I asked whether or not students regularly partake in healthy coping mechanisms, as this may play a part in decreasing overall stress. Coping mechanisms such as journaling, meditation, physical exercise, or others may distract from overwhelming stress and/or help students reflect, better process their emotions, and equip them to deal with their stressors. Unfortunately, 35.6% of students rarely participate in coping mechanisms, and 30% only sometimes do so. This may suggest that students are generally unprepared to deal with stress or don’t know how to cope in a healthy manner. 

As many of our students are clearly struggling with overwhelming stress and unable to manage it properly, it is important to do some evaluation about your own stress. Everyone has different lives and stressors, so take some time to reflect about what is causing the most tension in your own life, and try out different strategies to better deal with it. Prepare in advance for tests in exams, complete assignments ahead of time, keep a planner, ask for help, meditate, journal your thoughts, and take plenty of breaks. And most importantly, take care of yourselves. Good luck on exams and enjoy the upcoming summer!