dealing with stress in first year of college

How to effectively deal with stress in your first year of college is do not procrastinate. Get your homework done when you get it so it doesn’t pile up and frustrate you even more because you can’t get it all done on time. Make sure you get to class and hand your work in on time. A lot of professors don’t accept late work. This could cause you to fail a class if you make a habit of it. Also don’t skip class a lot. If you do you will be missing out on needed material and if you skip too many then some professors take away points for it. This can also cause you to fail a class. Make sure you get enough sleep so you don’t feel fatigued and stressed out. It will make your day go by faster and you won’t be so edgy. If you commute make sure you leave early enough to give you plenty on time in case you get caught up in traffic. My opinion matters because I ran into some of these problems and they were really stressful. I put work off until the last minute and I was rushing to get it all done. It was horrid.

Other Ways I Relieve Stress

I use many other methods other than music. One is I love to read. Reading gets my mind of the things and lets me go somewhere else without actually leaving my house. It lets me realize that someone somewhere is having the same problem I am, and there is a way to fix it. I just have to find it. Sometimes it helps me find a solution to what’s bothering me. Taking a break from it and going back to it later you can find things that you missed the first time. Other times I’ll go for a walk. I usually take my brother with me so I have someone to talk to and it makes time go faster. We will walk downtown and find our friends. Other times we will go find a stream or river. We just sit there talking and listening to the water running down stream. If we think to take our fishing poles we fish too but that doesn’t happen too often. We don’t like having to take the fish off the hook because it can be difficult with them moving around and being slimy. Those are a few other ways I relieve stress.

my cartoon

Here is the link: http://www.pixton.com/comic/gc880tfl

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Jimmy was able to deal with the adversity in his life in multiple ways. He had got a letter from a man named Harry who was chosen to write to him and not being able to read it, Jimmy was inspired to learn so he could write back. “I was eager to communicate with someone to alleviate the boredom of the dungeon.” (183) He starts writing poetry to express himself. “Writing for me was a connection to the streets, to someone out there.” (186) I still felt sorry for him at the end because his father passes away and he can’t go to his funeral. (232-233) His mom comes back into his life and she ends up being shot by her husband because she wanted to leave him.  (262) And his brother was killed by some guy who smashed his skull in while he was drunk. (262-263) No matter how hard he tries something always seems to go wrong. When he gets a head one step, he gets taken back 2 more.
I'm glad I read the book because it made me realize that no matter how tough things get you can still turn your life around. He had the strength and determination to do it from the time he was a teen and managed to over come it in the end. He taught me that as long as you have the will power and set your mind to doing something then you can do it. No matter the odds or how many obstacles are thrown at you along the way.  In the end it makes you stronger and who you are.

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Jimmy had warn Rick, his former employee’s roommate, that the guy they sold weed for wanted him dead and that he needed to get out of the place he was staying in. (127) How he dealt with it was he confronted Rick warned him. A hit squad tried attacking him for warning Rick. (128-129) How he dealt with this was he grabbed a butcher knife the chef was using to chop vegetables and as the one guy was jumping toward him he slit his stomach open and killed him. (129) He was confronted by one of the Le eMe (gang members) who was trying to tear him down emotionally and make him lose all hope for tipping one Rick off. (129-132) When they were done messing with his thoughts they ganged up on him and threw him against the wall then grabbed him by the neck and threw him on the floor. (132) He didn’t really do anything to deal with that. He just let it go. One night he was lying in his cot revisiting his past like he had begun doing to pass time and he went back to when he overheard his mom and dad talking. His dad wanted to his mom to return to him and be with him but she was already remarried. (146-149) How he gets out of this one is a guard few guards wake him up because they thought something was wrong with him. How I feel about this is that he still has it hard. He’s still trying so hard to make things right and no matter where he turns things always seem to go bad for him.   

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“I was too proud to admit that any of it hurt; too proud to think that even for a second it could phase me.” (91) He lost his plumbing job. (52) He and his friend got thrown in jail because they were caught trying to ship weed to a friend so he could sell it. (53-54) They had to put their business on hold that they had started because they didn’t have a contractor’s license. (64) He and his friend were picked up by federal agents on their way out from seeing their marijuana dealer and taken to prison. (79-80) While he and his girlfriend were over at his his former employees house for dinner, they all were busted for selling to a undercover agent. (83-84) Jimmy took off and left the other 3 at the house to be arrested. (84-87) He called a lawyer to check on what the cops had and decided to turn himself in. (87) He called his sister to ask her for $50 so a lawyer would present him but she wouldn’t give it to him. (89) His girlfriend wrote him a letter in jail saying that she and his former employee had fallen in love and she was leaving him. (91) While in jail he was kicked and pistol whipped, then drug by several detectives into an office to be interrogated and then pummeled until he wouldn’t feel the blows or see out of his eyes. (92-93) They then flung him into a car and drove down a highway, opened the door and tried kicking him out so that the police car behind them could run him over. (93)  How he deals with his adversity is he would smoke weed and get drunk. Which wasnt very effective because half the time it just made him edgier. My response to what I read was I still feel sorry for him because no matter what he tries to do it always gets blown up in his face and he just can’t seem to get a hold on things. No matter how hard he tries he keeps failing.

First 50 Pages of Book.

In my book the author is experiencing a great deal of adversity from childhood and throughout his whole life. When he was 6 years old he caught his mother cheating on his dad with some strange man. (8) His father was always in and out of jail and struggling with alcohol abuse.  When his father was drunk he became vulgar and abusive. (11) His mother left him and his older brother and sister with their grandparents while she took off with some rich white guy named Richard and fled to San Francisco and got eloped.  (17) At age 7 his grandpa died and he and his brother were taken to an orphanage. (18) He would often get beat up for nothing in the orphanage (21) He was taken to a detention center after quitting school when he was picked up by his older brother and put back into his father’s custody. (30) He found out that his brother was raped and he started getting into gang fights and drinking. (33) At age 17 he was picked up and charged for murder. (36) He has his first relationship and break up with his girlfriend at the time, Theresa.  (38-42) He went to see his mother because he found out she was back in Albuquerque but that didn’t go as he planned and he felt betrayed by her. (44)

How I felt reading these first few pages was, I was sorry for him because he had a rough start and it didn’t seem to get better. The more he tried to make it better the worse it got, and it just wasn’t working out for him. I felt horrible because both his mother and father ended up abandoning him and he had to fight to keep his will to live up. I honestly don’t know how he did it.

Stress Levels of College Students

Since 25 years ago the emotional health of college freshman has significantly declined according to the survey they take. Involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges that took the survey “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010”, the percentage of the students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. On the other hand the “above average percent fell from 64 percent in 1985 to 52 percent. With today’s economic factors counselors are seeing more kids in their offices that need help with their loans that’s putting a lot of stress on them, because they are trying to figure out how to pay them off and wondering if they will even have a career after college in order to pay them off. To some extent it is also caused by the pressures some students put on themselves.  The reason why its declining is really unknown but they think that the economy has a lot to do with it. For many students stress starts even before college. They had been overwhelmed by everything they had to do in their senior year of high school and with everyday activities in life; it rose to 29 percent from 27 percent the last year. Men tend to relieve stress better than women because they engage them selves in sports and other activities to relieve it where as women really don't.

Stress that I have encountered was the stress from school. Getting things done on time and making sure it’s turned in. Also, trying to find a job in this small town isn’t as easy as it seems. I’m currently trying to get my driver’s license and that’s building on to it. So ass you can see my typical day would be pretty stressful but I manage to keep it pretty low and under control.

Why I Chose The Book I Did

The book I chose was A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca. I chose this book because I write poetry as well so I think it will help me relate and understand the writer better. How it will help me is I will Along with that I am interested in learning about the struggles he went through and how he faced them. Everyone deals with these types of things in different ways, and it interests me on how many different ways there are to get past something that you struggled with in your life.  Also the fact that his life was such a mess, and he managed to not only turn it around, but to do so in prison is amazing to me. Once I would have gotten to prison I would have given up and quit, or at least waited until I got out to try and turn it around. Also I wouldn’t have had the courage to learn to read in a place like a prison where no matter what you do someone is always shooting you down and degrading what you do. I wouldn’t be able to live in that environment let alone do what he did.

Stress Test

The stress test is a test you take to find out the levels of stress you are having. It includes things such as marriage and divorce to failing and/or dropping a class. You circle the numbers that corresponds with your answers or write them down to keep track. When you are done going through the list add up the numbers where it says points and that is your score. If your score is over 300 points or higher then you have a great health risk. If you score between 150-300 points then you have about a 50/50 chance of serious health changes within 2 years. If your score is below 150 then there is about a 33% chance of a serious health change.
The score I got was a 148.This means, as you can see from what i have listed above, that i have a fairly low chance of a serious health change. I think that the score that i got pretty good considering how hectic my life is right now with just starting college and keeping up with my day to day activies that i usually like to do. It can get a tad bit little crazy.

Stress

I'm Keanisha and I'm going to talk about stress and how you can cope with it. Stress is a "non specific response of the body to any demand made on it, both physical or mental arousal to situations or events that we perceive as threatening or challenging." Stress is essentially worrying about things that you don't really need to. It isn't always bad though. Stress can be good, as long as you dont stress about things too much.
Stress can be caused by many things such as moving to a diffent area whether it be across the country or in the town next to you. Something as simple as a divorce or death of a loved one can also cause chronic stress. Chronic stress is ongoing stress that doesn't allow you to relax. Losing your job or even finding a job can cause you a good amount of stress, along with not enough sleep and your typical everyday problems. By typical every day problems I mean being late for classes and not having your work complete, getting sick and having to miss a day of school or work, and so on.
Here are some ways you can help you cope with stress:
you can read a book - this gets your mind off what you are worried about and lets you relax.
write your thoughts out - this will help you organize what you are thinking so you can sort them out and go about resolving what you are stressed about.
take a nap - it lets your mind rest and you rest as well.