Samantha Chaffin
Editor-in-Chief
It’s that time again.
As midterms deprive students throughout campus of sleep and sanity, I find myself all but literally ripping my hair out.
The worst part is that most of my current stress isn’t coming from test anxiety or an unusual work overload, but rather it comes from trying to plan and make decisions regarding life after graduation.
If you stop to think about it, my logic is extremely flawed.
In order to even pursue or be eligible to pursue all of these plans I am stressing over, I have to survive midterms, finals and an entire spring semester after that. Yet, I find myself unable to focus on the (several) tasks at hand because stress doesn’t leave room for logic.
For me, aside from the stress of studying intently, frantically writing papers and forgoing my regular five hours of sleep, fall midterms are just one more reminder that graduation is coming.
Prior to senior year, I don’t think that what graduation actually entails is truly tangible to most college students.
Not only does graduation mean that you are going to be completing college, but it means you will be forced to make life decisions and choose a post-graduation path.
If that isn’t terrifying enough (it is!), you also have to plan for that post-graduation path and take tests like the GRE, LSAT, MCAT or whatever other acronyms may apply.
After that’s completed, you have even bigger decisions to make regarding where you will attend school or where you will live and work.
What’s worse is that, if you’ve planned ahead and your first-choice graduate school, job or living situation doesn’t work out for whatever reason, you have to endure all of that stress and anxiety once more, or twice more or however many times it takes until something sticks.
At this point, I’m fairly convinced that all of the smiles and happiness they show in photos of graduation ceremonies and of college seniors ready to be done with school is all a lie, but I’ll have to get back to you on my final findings in May when I can experience it for myself first-hand.
On the bright side, students in similar situations, whether their stress comes from typical midterm stress, graduation stress or otherwise have resources available to them on campus.
Aside from regular resources offered on campus, which include counseling and advising, and my own personal coping method of napping, the ISU Counseling and Testing Center will be hosting a stress-relief series titled “How to Cope with Midterm Stress” on Tuesdays from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Career Center, located in Museum Building room 418.
These workshops are free to students, and students don’t even have to add “sign up” to their to-do list nor do they have to commit to the entire series to participate—just show up!
Workshops will be held Oct.21, Oct. 28, Nov. 4, Nov. 11, and Nov. 18 and will cover procrastination, test anxiety, stress management, mindfulness and dealing with difficult people, respectively.
For more information, contact Paula Seikel or Jennifer Miesh at ude.usinull@luapkies or ude.usinull@nnejseim.
