We all know that moving away from home and becoming responsible for making yourself study (ugh) can be incredibly stressful. You have to grow up incredibly quickly – no more relying on your mum to find something every time you lose it, or to cook your favourite meals when you’re feeling a bit low.
So, here are some handy tips which you may find vital in reducing your stress levels and making transitioning to university a much more enjoyable experience.
1. Give yourself enough time for assignments
This sounds obvious, but you’re bound to get a rubbish mark if you cram an assignment at the very last minute. Make sure you give yourself enough time to plan and prepare for an assignment, as well as actually writing or creating it. Plus, it might be useful to allow time for something to go disastrously wrong – you’d rather that than have to pull several all-nighters in a row to get an important paper in.
2. Join the university gym
Or failing that (student budget and all), just work out at home. This is an incredible way to bust stress. Plus, it’ll help to avoid “Fresher’s Fourteen”, AKA the average number of pounds a first year puts on! Working out ensures you keep in shape, which boosts your confidence and can therefore reduce stress.
3. Do drinking right
So we’ve all heard about university students’ drunken antics from universities across the UK, but living in a drink-infused frenzy all of the time isn’t the way to go (trust me). If you don’t want to drink, don’t be pressured into it, and make something up if you have to! If you do want to, make sure you leave enough time for studying. It’s great fun to go out every other night, but having bi-daily hangovers is going to be a pain, especially when you’ve got important lectures that, you know, you’re paying quite a hefty sum for.
4. Don’t miss lectures
This is such a vicious cycle to get into. You wake up one morning demotivated to go to your 9am lecture, the next week comes around and you realise you haven’t caught up, so the next lecture will be meaningless to you and so on. It seems harmless, but when it gets around to the exam period you’ll realise you’ve missed a unit or two and have to be very, very nice to people on your course.
5. Eat right
During my first year I didn’t realise how much my diet of biscuits, mac and cheese and pizza was affecting me mentally. Not only did I not feel good about myself, but I got ill regularly and felt generally down, which obviously made my stress levels spike. In second year I changed this and it’s had a massive impact. Eating the right foods (and avoiding the wrong ones) means you’ll have much more energy, so will be able to party and do your work without getting run down. Plus, it’s beneficial to your psychological health.
I hope these have helped. The last thing I’ll say is to remember that one of the best ways of making sure your stress levels are low is to just enjoy yourself during your time at university.
How do you cope with stress at university? Let us know in the comments below.
Photo: Bernard Goldbach / Flickr
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