Why Princeton students have a love affair with stress

No, seriously — really stressed. A recent study released by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute showed that college freshmen today are on average more stressed than their predecessors were 25 years ago. Nearly every major news source around the country picked up this little nugget of research, broadcasting it as something else wrong with the world today.

My first reaction was to completely agree with the study. Well, of course we college students are stressed — look at all the stressors we deal with on a daily basis! But then I began to wonder — if today’s college students are in general more stressed, how much more or less stressed are Princeton students than our counterparts at other colleges?

After thinking it over, I quickly came to the conclusion that Princeton students are more stressed than the majority of college students. Of course, we deal with a lot of the same stressors that most college students do — grades, relationships, financial concerns. But Princeton students also face a lot of unique stressors.

One of the biggest stressors at Princeton is the price tag. Our university has a pretty price tag of nearly $50,000 a year to accompany its designation as one of the best schools in the country. With four years of undergraduate education, that price tag comes to around $200,000, which makes Princeton an expensive school to attend. Of course, with our generous financial aid, most people have help in paying that enormous sum of money each year. Regardless, the fact that your education has been judged to be worth $50,000 a year is kind of stressful. It means you feel like you have to get your supposed money’s worth; that you have to try to do everything and take advantage of all Princeton offers. In that way, the price tag becomes a major stressor.

Princeton also has a unique academic environment. It’s definitely one of the most academically intense and competitive universities. Coming from high school, where many of us were at the top of our classes, coming to Princeton can be a real eye opener. At Princeton, you’re in an environment where everyone is just as good as you are at academics. That’s incredibly hard to adjust to and it definitely takes some time before you stop feeling like the dumbest person on campus. Even after you get used to the fact that we’re all a bunch of really smart people, you still feel pressured to do as well or better than your classmates. Add in the fact that grade deflation makes it more difficult to get good grades and you have Princeton’s recipe for ensuring the maximum amount of academic stress.

Our unique academic calendar is also a pretty big source of stress for most students. I’m sure we can all think back to the immensely stressful times we faced a few short weeks ago. We had papers and exams in January, when classes had ended in December. You have to deal with the bizarre contradiction of a “holiday break”, while a giant anvil made of upcoming papers and exams hangs over your head. Meanwhile, all your friends at other colleges have finished their first semesters’ work and are leisurely enjoying their “real” breaks from school. You, on the other hand, come back up here to sweat and slave over papers and exams. And let’s not even talk about how difficult it is to motivate yourself to get anything academic done in January.

So Princeton students have a lot of really good reasons to be stressed. As the UCLA study showed, a lot of students around the country are feeling so stressed out that it’s negatively affecting many facets of their lives — their academics, health, etc. I’ve always been a fan of the New Age belief that every individual has the power to control how he or she reacts to stressors in their lives. Yeah, it’s incredibly easy to feel justifiably stressed out over a lot of stuff. But it’s also pretty easy to take a deep breath, put things in perspective and just calm down a bit. The University offers a ton of activities, from meditation lunches to free yoga classes to help you deal with daily stress. It’s also always important to remember that your friends and family are happy to help you and talk things over. I’ve had many Skype sessions with a friend that end with me realizing how my problems really aren’t that bad and can be dealt with pretty painlessly. Then there are always the wonderful folk over at Counseling and Psychological Services at University Health Services, if you want to talk something over with someone who has an outsider’s perspective.

The stress that Princeton students deal with every day is not going to go away and probably will only intensify as time goes on. However, we all can choose to deal with the stress in better and healthier ways.