“I am sorry, mom! I could not become first in this exam. I promise I will study more for the next one. Please don’t be mad at me.”- isn’t this a line we all said to our parents at any point in our life! Interestingly Academic stress is a major issue of the modern world that needs to be taken into serious consideration but most people don’t even acknowledge its existence.

How many of you feel like crying before the exam? I suppose most of you do. Some of us even lose appetite, sweat, face bowel issues and worse suffer from anxiety. All these are natural reactions of our body when faced with any academic obligation like exam pressure, the deadline for assignment submission, getting the highest scores in the class, thesis submission, and more.

Well, all these situations are a part and parcel of the lives of the people and students of this competitive era. However, students suffer from academic stress from their early childhood.

Although the extent of the pressure varies depending on their parents and region of upbringing, it is more or less prevalent in both the eastern and western world.

What Is Academic Stress:

Academic stress is the reaction your body gives when faced with exam and education-related tensions. It can come from your family, teachers, friends, and even your expectations.

When you are part of a highly educated and successful family and you see yourself as the only one who is not being able to understand a subject or get moderate grades, that feeling of being unwanted is what academic stress is.

Even when you see your best friend answering every question in the class correctly while you hardly understand the topic, you probably look down upon yourself.

While suffering from excessive academic stress people form psychological illnesses like nervousness, anxiety, depression, inferiority complex, cranky behavior from the days of their schools and colleges which becomes worse in their undergraduate and graduate level.

But if we knew that these academic certificates won’t make money for us then we would have enjoyed our childhood a little more without worrying about marks.

Nevertheless, academic stress can be minimized and dealt with if we follow some rituals in our lives and cultivate habits. Let’s get to know some of the tricks on how to deal with academic stress.

Top 5 Ways To Deal With Academic Stress:

1. PREPARE A SCHEDULE: 

The major stressor for academic stress is time ignorance and procrastination. Students think that the exam is 4 days later so they have ample time to study. But that extra time never gets utilized and they feel all tense as to how to finish studies on the night before the exam.

However, keeping a schedule of all the deadlines, exams, and allotting at least 3 hours for studies regularly will help reduce the last-minute stress. For this keep track of where your major hours go. If you spend most of your time scrolling social media then you must get a grip on your utilization of time.

Schedule your life fellow academics, students, children. Although you can always go out of track but make sure you come back in time.

2. STAY IN THE PRESENT:

Rather than thinking about past bad grades along with the nightmares after that. As well as what will happen in the exam tomorrow or what you will become if you don’t become 1st in class. Just stay in the present moment and focus on what works you have to meet now.

When you don’t stay in the moment you keep avoiding what is to be done and eventually do more bad in your exams and submit your assignments late.

You can only control your present so love it, work for it, own it, and build it with your conscience and hands.

3. Stop Comparing and Start Forgiving:

In this competitive world, it is very easy for every student to measure their success based on others. What you have to realize is that not every human can understand a topic at the same speed as others.

Some require less time while others require more effort and time to get to the basics of a subject. So stop comparing your results with that of the first boy.

Always appreciate your growth and forgive yourself for late submission after apologizing to the teacher. Don’t assume that a late submission or low grades in the end.

You can always improve if you want. And for that, you must forgive yourself for the mistakes and believe in yourself.

4. Make a habit of good Self-Care:

Practice self-care frequently like a habit. That is, get at least 8 hours of sleep at night; eat healthy with nutrient-rich foods like fruits, veggies, good fats, carbohydrates for energy, drink lots of water; exercise every day at least for half an hour.

Along with these, meditation will help keep your anxiety in control. Keep a day off every week from work and indulge in reading, cleaning, traveling, eating unhealthy food.

All these will help relieve your academic stress and workload and keep you happy in the long run.

5. Ask for Help from Positive People:

Don’t stay in isolation rather surround yourself with positive mentors who can guide you. You must know that what you are feeling now they have gone through it already. So they will give you experienced advice and understand you.

Ask help from those people who won’t judge you by your grades rather will act as a motivator in your life. Keep people close to yourself who will say, “Well done on your improvement.” Not the ones who say, “Oh! How sad you did not come first.”

Although these are the best ways to deal with academic stress. Here is another bonus way for you guys. It is the art of keeping your goals and expectations low. Setting your goal to be 10th in class rather than 1st will automatically release your stress. This will in turn help you to focus more on your studies and might yield you a higher position than your expectations.

So all the best in your fight with academic pressure! May the marks and paperwork don’t take happiness and innocence from your lives.