Stress

I have always been a person who has stressed about things, but up to this year my stress has always revolved around school. However, since I came to university, stress has somehow embodied itself in almost every aspect of my life. There was the stress of choosing and paying for school, the stress of dealing with a worried and sentimental mom, the stress of moving in, the stress of intro week since some kids were partying all the time and constantly knocking at your door not to mention the pee and puke and beer all over the halls. There was the stress about marks and not knowing where you stood: whether you would get 87% or 43%. There was the stress about living on a campus where you could not walk around alone safely at night. And the stress of being completely on your own.

Intro week was tons of fun but it had stress in it too -- on my body; I stayed up until 5 am every night and awoke at 8 am every day so that was hard to get used to. I did get really sick twice. Other than that, intro week was great. It is what you make of it and if you do everything and meet anyone that you can, university will be everything you hoped it would be.

In high school I was always an 80's and 90's student. So when my first work came back in the 60's I was shell shocked. It freaked me out. But everything is relative and it is something you just learn to deal with: the expectations are higher, good marks are harder to come by and as long as you are doing your best, that is all you can do. You can seek out all the resources you want on campus (and you should) but essentially it comes down to you and how much work you're willing to put in.

Living downtown in a big city was a huge adjustment. Having moved from a city where I could walk alone any time of the night, I had developed a sense of false security. I wasn't used to seeing missions and druggies and sketchy guys hanging around; it was disconcerting because it's all just next door. Here I always have to be reminded that I need a buddy to walk home.

It was hard to leave home because you are kind of on your own. That can be difficult, especially when you are sick. There is so much stuff to do that some students will go crazy with all the distractions and slowly go down the tubes. You can usually recognize which ones it will happen to and I was scared for some of my friends because they were used to getting drunk and having people take care of them. But here you can be really on your own. That's why the people who do best are the ones with a strong support network of friends; mine has become my family. The dynamics of friendship here are so different from those at home.

I was scared about stress and so very overwhelmed but I had to develop strategies to deal with it. Sports was one strategy for me. Networking was another.

Here are the lessons I learned: be smart, don't let people change you unless it is for the better, work hard, be sociable. Then you will be fine.