Hello, hello, hello everyone!!! I hope you are all well and have had a lovely Reading Week.
Last week I wrote about Writing Outstanding Conclusions, I hope it helped. This week I would like to dedicate my blog to National Stress Awareness Day, which is the first Wednesday of every November.
Its main aim is to allow all of us to take some time to think about what is making you stressed out, to be able to deal with it before it may cause you further health problems.
It’s essential to have reasonable control of your stress and to be able to manage everything can sometimes make us overwhelmed. I want to take this opportunity to tell you about how I felt in the past two months.
As part of my BA Early Childhood Studies course, I needed to gain experience. When I first got my placement, it was in a very far place. I got a bit worried about how I was supposed to change my placement after being put in one. I started complaining to those close to me and becoming very negative about it. The worst part was when I started blaming everyone, even though I was aware that the only person to blame was myself because I was the only person who could at least make a change.
I never had to fend for myself because I always had the support of my parents. At this point, I was at the beginning of the stress because this time I was 3 hours by plane away from my parents. I felt disappointed, stressed, scared, nervous, anything but happy. I was already nearly in the middle of the semester, and I still didn’t have a placement that related to my modules.
Every day after uni I was going home crying in my bed as for me, it was a big thing because it’s my future and I didn’t want to make any mistakes. The problem was my fear which was caused by the stress I was feeling, due to the thoughts like “oh its too late, everyone has started placement”, “no schools will accept me at this point of the year”, “I am not sure who to email”, “what if I quit?”, “what if I give up my dream?”, or even “what if this is a signal to tell me I am not as good as I thought?” All these questions, doubts and worries gave me a lot of stress that caused me not to pay much attention in class, which wasn’t ideal due to all the assignments I had to hand in. On top of that, I had to solve my placement, and it wasn’t straightforward.
As a last resort, I thought of my year manager, and she helped me a lot, mainly she calms me down. After feeling more relief from all the stress, I managed to send emails to a few schools and I managed to arrange a meeting with one of them. I am ending up with a place really close to my accommodation and with outstanding values that I strongly believe in.
The point of this experience is to give you all the push you need to take control of anything that may cause you stress. Now I have learned to fight for what I believe in and what I think is best for my future.
Key steps to stop the stress:
- Try to notice what makes you stressed
- Focus on what you can control
- Talk about it
Let’s spread National Stress Awareness Day and help ourselves to manage stress.
“You’re braver than you believe and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think” – Winnie the Pooh, Walt Disney.
R.A.