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Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, or Modeling Stress Management for our Students

By Mona Pelkey, United States Military Academy, West Point

Lately it seems that more and more students are showing up in my office with problems related to stress management. These students manifest their difficulties with stress in a number of ways: sleep problems, racing hearts, sweaty palms, poor concentration, and of course, the resultant falling grades. Somehow students are willing to suffer the physical symptoms without intervention, until the academic symptoms appear. Then into the learning center they trudge, hoping for a magic pill that will somehow help them to raise their grades.

As I engage in the initial conversations necessary to acquaint myself with the students and gain their trust and confidence, I often entice these students to admit that they are ludicrously over-scheduled, or that they have ridiculous expectations of themselves. In fact, many students speak of being "stressed out" with a hint of pride in their voices. The message seems to be, "Look! I am important. I am needed everywhere. I am indispensable. The world does not rotate without me!" They do not seem to care that they are only human, and need, like all other humans, a good night's sleep, nutritious food, exercise, and relaxation in order to function well in life. They need to incorporate these practices into their everyday lives, in addition to good study habits, for academic success. Instead, many over-involve themselves in innumerable extracurricular activities and then study until the wee hours, consuming gallons of caffeinated beverages to help themselves stay awake and dozens of timesaving but calorie-ridden fast-food meals and snacks. Too tired to indulge in stress-relieving exercise and too keyed up to relax even for a few moments, these students have placed themselves on a seemingly endless treadmill, trapped in the downwardly spiraling cycle of increasingly less efficient mental performance, fueled by chronic sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, and poor exercise habits. Instead of being willing to pare down the exhaustive lists of activities, many students want us to help them with the "miracle" of time management-cramming 36 hours' worth of activities in a 24-hour day, while helping them to improve their grades.

Does this scenario sound familiar? It is easy to recognize poor time and stress management in our students, and it is even easier to tell them what to do. Learning center professionals deal with students every day who are "stressed out" in one way or another. Many of these students are pushing themselves hard toward success, yet success eludes them. They come to us for help. We know that these students need help with time management and stress management, we know they need sleep, we know they need to cut back on the caffeine-and so do they. We tell them what we know and what to do for relief, they nod their heads- and then leave our offices and continue their lives as before, continuing the downward spiral until they become an academic emergency case. We are frustrated. How do we get them to "buy in" and heed our excellent advice? Why don't they listen until desperate measures are required?

Perhaps we should look in the mirror to see why.

What we do as learning center professionals speaks volumes to our students, many decibels louder than what we preach. We tell our students to limit their curricular and extracurricular activities, while we overbook our appointments and race from one activity to the next in our time off, as though we have no control over what happens in our lives. We tell our students to be sure to get 7-8 hours of sleep each night, but we often stay up so late we come to work with rings under our eyes, and then have to slurp coffee all day long just to stay alert. We tell our students to feed their brains with nutritious food while we nosh from the candy jars that we keep in our offices "for them" and grab whatever is handy for lunch. (We kid ourselves if we think that the students do not notice the Burger King wrappers in our trash baskets. They notice, if for no other reason than the smell of French fries lingers for days.) We are foolish if we overlook the possibility that our students may think us hypocrites when we tell them that exercise is great stress relief while it is obvious we have not exercised in years because we are significantly overweight ourselves. In addition, when was the last time we indulged ourselves by reading or learning something just for the fun of it?

Many of us think of ourselves as professional lifelong learners, and we encourage our students to become lifelong learners as well. However, being a lifelong learner entails more than attending classes, reading voraciously, or exercising one's curiosity-it also entails taking good care of one's well-being, especially one's brain. We as caretakers of students are often most guilty of not taking care of ourselves. Our stress levels are often high because we do not exert enough control over our schedules. We eat the wrong foods because we do not take the time to seek or prepare wholesome meals. We are chronically fatigued because we do not know how to say, "No." We read the stuff we have to read, and learn the stuff we have to learn-but many of us don't have time to enjoy life because we have placed ourselves at the bottom of our list of priorities. We take care of everybody and everything-but us.

We would advise our students to take better care of themselves so that they could become better learners. We would also tell our students that they should value themselves for themselves, that there is no "need" to prove that the world depends on them, that they do not need to please everyone, that they do not need to be perfect, that they are valuable without having to be "productive" 24 hours a day. Yet many of us live as though the world would end if we ever said "No" to anyone.

In order to teach students to take care of themselves in the pursuit of academic excellence, we need to model the example, not merely preach the practice. When our students see us living what we preach, they will be more likely to take our advice. In light of this, as professional development, I think I'm going to knock off early today, and take a leisurely, long walk. I'm going to deeply inhale the crisp autumn air, and focus on and enjoy all the brilliant oranges, reds, and yellows of the season. When I return home, I'm going to take the time necessary to prepare a healthy dinner, and I am going to turn off the television while I savor the food. I'm going to read from a novel that I've been meaning to start for a long time. I'm going to bed early enough to ensure eight hours of sleep time. I'm not going to worry about who or what I am neglecting while I take this time for myself, either, because if I neglect myself, in actuality I am also neglecting everyone I serve. I will set the good example. I will teach, not preach.

Questions or comments? Contact the author at Mona.Pelkey@usma.edu.

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