We all know the negative effects stress can have on our life and our performances. While it can improve performances in the short-term, it is when stress becomes a constant, that our health is in danger and we will not be able to deliver.
One group that particularly suffers from stress are students. It appears obvious, right? Crammed schedules with lectures and assignments; Exam periods in which coffee becomes a staple food and the only things they see for weeks are books and laptops. But these are the conditions students subscribe to and especially exam periods, are the short-term occurrences which can be performance enhancing. To understand the real challenges students go through, you have to look beyond the obvious and understand the deeper challenges of the young generation and how to counter these. So what affects your students in their daily life? What makes YOUR students really feel stressed?
1. Impression-management
Research, especially stigma research, associate many downsides with impression-management. When I speak of impression-management, I speak of the continuous effort to carefully decide on which parts of the own personality one wants to present and which he prefers to hide. Young students, placed in high achieving environments, surrounded by people with impressive life-paths have to carefully decide on how they want to appear in any given situation.
2. Expectations
Slightly related with the first point are expectations. Students in high achieving environments do want to outperform each and every body in any given situation. However, they barely want to so for the sake of outperforming, but rather because they feel an everlasting anxiety of not reaching others expectations. Their parents' expectations who were saving a decade to pay for the education, their lecturers' expectations who are influential people in their future work environments and can influence any potential employers' decision and eventually, future employers' expectations and strict measurement of students' abilities by comparing them to their peers.
While impression-management efforts and others' expectations do put a lot of pressure on students, there are more factors to it. If you want to stay updated, please subscribe to our blog and you will receive further insights shortly.
If these two already provided you with the feeling that you can make an impact by providing a better environment for students, in which they can more freely express themselves without having to fear any consequences, take a look at our guide that helps you to create a healthier environment.
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