Stressors In College

For some individuals the transition from high school to college can be difficult. While high school has its demands and stressors, the stressors of college are usually greater than those of high school. For example, college may hold a financial burden that students may not have experienced in high school. College students are constantly dealing with new stressors that often tend to be quite frustrating. Each person handles these stressors differently. Some of these stressors may include cramming to study for an exam for countless hours, second-guessing their major decision, questioning whether they are going in the right path with their life, etc. honestly the stressors can be endless. However, these stressors are only the beginning, I say …show more content…
Using a sample size of twenty participants, the students were questioned on three different stressors, school-work, school-athletic and school-childcare. The general census is that the more time a person spends with their outside responsibilities, the greater of an impact it would play on their academic abilities. This includes the difference between working a full-time and a part-time job, competing on a team that requires typically five days a week of practice and the balance of having a child. This brought me to my first hypothesis, the more time a person was removed from their schoolwork, the greater negative impact it will have on that person’s academic performance. Another interesting thing to focus in on was the impact each different stressor or responsibility played both alone or together with the other stressors. For example, an individual working 40 hours a week while raising a child and attending school would be far more stressful than an individual whose sole responsibility was their education. This lead to my second hypothesis stating that the more responsibilities a person has, the greater of a negative impact it would play on their grades. In this hypothesis the greatest stressors being considered childcare because at the end of the day raising a child doesn’t always have a set …show more content…
While raising a child and attending school is difficult the results showed that all but one of the participants felt that they could balance the two. Three out of five of the respondents recorded having assistance at home. As previously stated raising a child and attending school is difficult, but when you included an additional factor of not having assistance school may become strenuous. Interestingly enough the two who recorded this recorded having great balance of the two and no negative effect. This may be attributed to age as these two people were in the older categories. There was only one outlier who recorded to have difficulty balancing all three stressors simultaneously, those being, work school and having a child. This individual supports my first hypothesis because overall that person had difficulty balancing every category. The difference from the outlier participant and the other responses was the age. The younger participant had trouble balancing out the stressors while the others were completely unbothered by them.
The overall findings for athletes were expected. As an student-athlete, balance is not only preached but enforced. Student athletes are required to maintain a certain GPA average and attend study hall when they fall too close to that minimum. Of the eleven student athletes’ who had taken the survey, the overall feeling was that balancing