Stress in our life is inevitable. Adults feel the stress of their jobs, personal lives, finances, relationships, and even community and world events happening around us. As high school students and teenagers, most of our stress revolves around academic pressure (assignments and grades) as well as peer and social pressure. We only have a finite number of hours in a day and high school students often fill up their day with a number of academic and extracurricular pursuits leaving them with little time to learn what they set out to and finish their work on time. While a lot of this stress is inevitable, some of it can be avoided with better planning and choices and most of it can be mitigated with coping strategies. We spoke to many students and teachers at our high school to understand what their sources of stress are and how they deal with stress. But first, let's understand what stress really means.

Stress is a natural physical, mental and/or emotional reaction to our life experiences. It is a feeling we experience when we perceive that the demands on our personal resources are greater than what we can cope with. Most people consider stress to be something that causes distress. However, stress is not always harmful. Our body responds to stress by releasing hormones that increase our heart and breathing rates and ready our muscles to respond. This leads to increased productivity. Such stress is good stress, also known as eustress. For example, stress during a race can make one run faster towards the finish line. Most stress that students face while learning new things can be beneficial to them if they learn to control their stress. When we experience struggle and frustration while learning something new, it does not mean that we have reached our limits. It is in fact a sign that we are expanding those limits. The uncomfortable feelings we have under intense stress, the pounding heart and the tightness in the stomach are not signs that we are headed for failure. It’s our brain recognizing that we are facing a major challenge and gathering our body’s resources to give us the boost we need to succeed. So, it's a growth opportunity if students can learn to cope with the associated stress. It is important for students to interpret such challenging situations and stress positively so they don't shy away from challenges that help them grow and mature into capable young adults.

We're often overwhelmed by our workload, stressed out about our deadlines and struggle to learn challenging concepts. As discussed above, such stress is often an opportunity for personal growth and a valuable part of the learning process as we push towards our goals. But each person/student must determine how hard to push themselves and what their limits are. Stress is a highly personalized phenomenon and can vary widely even in identical situations for different people. Students learn differently and cope with stress differently. Growth and learning, however important, cannot come at the cost of one’s mental health and well being. A student who experiences depression, anxiety or negative feelings/emotions must get help and talk to an adult (at home or school) to understand their feelings and reset their learning plan if needed. Dave Weiner (Director of Upper School) says for students that “being in tune with your emotions and how you are feeling is an essential life-skill. You must first identify how you are feeling and then based on that, self-reflect about why you are feeling a certain way. As a result, you more deeply understand your feelings and can address them more easily.” It's also important to learn to cope with stress because long-term unmanaged stress can cause a lot of harm to our health and lives. Stress can impact our eating and exercise habits, our sleep patterns, our relationships, our mood, and motivation.

Identifying our stress triggers is the first step towards learning to manage our stress. Many KLS High school students who were interviewed reported that upcoming exams and deadlines stress them out the most. Some also recognized that if they planned their work better, they could avoid this last minute stress. Exam stress was another common theme across the interviewed students and some reported that this was independent of how prepared they were for an exam. Among the interviewed teachers, most of them said that they get stressed out when they don't have enough time or bandwidth to finish all their work. Most of the interviewed students indicated self awareness about their stress triggers and had ways to cope with it. Exercise and outdoor activities including hanging out with friends and family was the most common strategy mentioned by the students for stress management. Coping strategies used by our teachers include going to the gym, relaxing and playing with their kids, praying, reading books and talking to close friends/family. While this is not a comprehensive list, other good ways to manage stress are meditation/yoga exercises, working on a hobby, outdoor activities like hiking, spending time with friends/family, watching TV, sleeping, etc.

Stress management is also a highly personalized activity and everyone has to determine what works best for them to cope up with their own stress. Making time to reflect and asking ourselves some hard questions about why we feel a certain way is a good starting point towards stress management. Mikki McMillion (Director of Student Well-Being) says students should “be mindful of your self-talk. Are you criticizing yourself and/or reliving the stressful moment by dwelling on it? Are you giving yourself space and permission to recognize why and what is happening, and making room for grace, pivots and next steps?”. The goal is to cultivate a relaxation response to our stress so we can stay calm and carry on while coping with the pressure of the stressful situation. This will enable us to control stress rather than the other way around.