By: Katie Forcade
“If I don’t get a good grade, I [am] very, very upset,” says sophomore Elizabeth Getis. Have you ever said the same thing before?
On Monday, January 14th, Tuscarora started its midterm exam week. Students were either prepared or unprepared for this week. Teachers gave out last minute huge homework, project, and possibly test grades to wrap up the semester.
With all this homework, projects, and studying, students were bound to stress out, especially if they wanted high grades for college applications.
“Grades in high school determine your college, and college determines your life after,” says Getis.
What students don’t realize is that with stress comes a lot of side effects which in turn might even stress them out more.
Depression can be caused by stressing out over homework and midterms. Depression is more than just sadness; it can cause a person to feel intense feelings and lose interest in something they usually enjoy or do a lot of.
Stress is also a cause of high blood pressure and heart problems. It can often overwork a person’s heart to the point where high blood sugar and heart problems (like heart attacks) can possibly occur.
General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a common disorder where a person can over-worry about someone or something. Stress is a key cause of GAD, and is the main reason people are diagnosed with anxiety in the first place. Anxiety can also lead to depression, and it should be treated immediately.
Also, stress plays a key factor in causing skin conditions such as acne, eczema, hives, rosacea (puffy redness), psoriasis (thick white, silver, or red patches of skin that form due to skin cells growing too quick), alopecia (hair loss), vitiligo (depigmented white spots on skin), trichotillomania (hair pulling), and self-mutilation disorders. Doctors are learning to call all of this “psychodermatology,” which is the field that addresses and studies the impact of emotions and how they relate to skin.
Diabetes is a chronic disease where an individual’s blood can contain high levels of sugar. Stress can cause diabetes, and common symptoms of it include blurred vision, excessive thirst, fatigue, hunger, and even weight loss. There are two types of diabetes: Type 1 diabetes, which can occur at any age and has no prevention, and Type 2 diabetes, which often occurs in childhood and also can occur due to obesity. Diabetes affects more than 20 million Americans, and many people with Type 2 Diabetes often don’t know they have it.
To manage stress and reduce your risk of getting a combination of any or all of the effects stress gives you, you first have to take charge of your thoughts, emotions, schedule, and the way you deal with problems.
First of all, make sure you start homework and projects the night they are assigned. This helps relieve the stress you feel about the deadline, whereas procrastinating on it leads to more severe stress.
Also, keep a stress journal. It isn’t as bad as it sounds. Writing down what stresses you out, how you feel, how you choose to act, and how the problem is solved actually relieves stress.
Next time you start to stress out, remember the “side effects” that could happen as a result of stress.
