National Stress Awareness Week: Tips for managing stress at university

Stress! We all know it; we all experience it. C'est la vie! Unfortunately, experiencing some stress is an inevitable part of a student's life. However, too much stress can be detrimental to the body and mind. It is important to learn coping strategies to maintain well-being and manage this stress, to ensure you are enjoying your time at university and maintaining a good state of well-being.

As it’s National Stress Awareness Week, MSc Global Healthcare Management (analytics route) student Rida Peerzada shares her top tips for managing stress and maintaining a state of well-being whilst studying.

Rest, relax and reset

Take a walk, cook, dance, enjoy a bubble bath or have a deep conversation with your friends. Sometimes simply taking short breaks of relaxing activities from those long study hours. Even for a brief moment, if any activity helps you distract your brain from the stress and problems, do it! 

Unsurprisingly, sleep is also an essential part of resting, relaxing and resetting. Your sleep has a direct impact your mood, state of well-being and productivity for the day. Any imbalance in this can put you off track and increase your stress level. If you can, try and establish a solid sleep schedule that you try and maintain most days.

Plan and organize

Planning your day and following your schedule will help you meet deadlines, avoid any last-minute stress and anxiety, and keep you on top of things. It can be helpful to plan your daily routine using online or paper-based planners. Keeping a diary or journaling can help you record your daily activities and seek goals and positivity. Journaling in particular can be a helpful outlet for your frustration and problems. It can help you reflect on situations and identify stressors which you can then work on resolving.

Connect with people 

Having a good support network of colleagues, friends and family can ease your stress and help you see things differently. They can lend a useful listening ear and provide some direction on how to manage your stress. You can also connect to professionals or get help via the UCL support & well-being services, which provides a wide range of resources and services to help promote positive mental health and well-being. UCL's support & well-being services provide a confidential and safe environment for students to discuss their problems. These services are free of cost and available to all UCL students of all levels. In times of stress, it really is important to feel supported and cared for, and the UCL support and wellbeing team can help with this.

Maintain a healthy lifestyle

As busy students, we can often fall into the habit on relying on endless caffeine, fast food and spending long hours sitting at our desks in front of a screen. By moving our bodies regularly, exercising in whatever way suits us and trying our best to eat balanced meals, we may start to see our stress levels decrease as our bodies feel nourished and cared for. 

Stress is a normal response of the human mind. Every individual's perception and response to stress can be different. We all feel lost and stressed at some point in our lives, but we also deserve to manage that stress and feel calm, happy and relaxed whilst studying. So breathe, take a step back, we are all in the same boat and we can get through it together!