I’ve been at Cornell for about 3 months now and I’ve quickly learned how intense classes can get and how everything just seems to pile up in a matter of days. It becomes very difficult to stay on top of work and as a result, our stress accumulates to the point where we we can no longer handle it. It seems like the workload will never end and no matter how much you get done, you still feel behind. Last Thursday, I went to THRIVE @ Cornell to see how professionals suggest we handle it.
We’ve all heard about the typical “do your homework a little bit at a time” and “don’t wait until the night before to finish your assignments” spiel. This time, it was different. We got a much deeper, more interactive approach about how we should deal with stress. It was so much more realistic–the speakers understood that sometimes we just get behind, that sometimes we have to pull all nighters. My favorite demonstration was the opening for the event: she told us to pick up whatever was closest to us (I picked up the plate I stacked with cheese and crackers) and hold it above our heads and for how long we thought we would be able to hold it up. Even though the weight of the object doesn’t change, the burden it carries does. This was her analogy to stress.
She went on to tell us that there exists a scale of stress levels and at a certain point, stress leads to maximum productivity. But that threshold is small and falling into the unproductive, unhealthy stress zone is very easy. Sometimes we have to know when enough is enough and take off the metaphorical stress-backpacks we carry. The best way to deal with stress is to know when it’s starting to go over the threshold and take action to stop it from throwing us over the edge.
That’s really interesting to know that there is a threshold in which something as negative and burdensome as stress can be targeted at productivity. Did the speakers ever mention how to know when we are approaching this threshold level of stress so that we could potentially continue doing whatever we’re doing to maintain the same level of maximal productivity?
Hi Kaylin! The speakers did mention that the threshold for tolerable/productive stress seems is dependent upon the individual. They mentioned that we tend to know when we are no longer being productive (when we sit in front of books for a few hours and we don’t understand any of it), we need to take a break or stop studying. It just adds more stress for us to carry knowing that we aren’t getting things done in the time span that we’d like to. I hope some of these methods help you during the last two, very stressful weeks of school!
Sounds like it was an interesting event. Did the speakers offer any tips for completing work stress-free?
I feel like this might be a hard task to accomplish because the very nature of work induces stress upon the individual, but there are definitely ways to minimize it! We just need to know when we’ve had enough, when we’ve maxed out our productivity, and when to get back to work. They made it seem very much like a trial and error thing. The speakers pushed us to understand the ways our bodies work to really minimize the stress we place on it.