by Elly Beauchamp | staff writer

With 35 days left of this school year, it’s that time of year again to cram for finals. Senior Doug Robison is feeling the pressure of passing classes, getting accepted into college, and handling piles of stress. However, with National Stress Awareness Month upon us, he is taking the time to think about himself and relax from the stresses around him.

“I play video games, sometimes I’ll go for a run or a walk, that’s helpful too, it releases endorphins. I think that there could more opportunities, especially for exercise, cause for our break period we essentially only have the courtyard to hang out in,” Robison said.

Stress Awareness Month is a time to recognize what creates stress in your life and to find easy ways to help relieve that pressure.

“I think that it’s a great idea to bring attention to something that we rarely talk about, those things that really cause mental health conditions.Stress is in all of our lives, some just have more than others, but everyone has some kind of stress that’s affecting their lives in some kind of way,” STAN counselor Lisa Williams said,” What I like about what’s happening nowadays and what’s happening with the stress month is that there’s so many ways now that we are recognizing how to relieve stress and it’s important to kind of start as early as you can in your life, learning how to self manage your stress.”

There is something that anyone can do to relieve their stress that is as easy as just sitting down and taking a minute for yourself.

“Each person is different and what may work for one person may not work for another. Some students are just able to listen to music, some read, some take a nap to just give their brain some rest, some take a walk. There’s also mindfulness, which is the technique of how to destress your brain and thoughts,” Williams said.

Understanding what causes stress in your life is one of the ways to combat it and start to solve the problem.

“Im most stressed out by college, like costs. I just worry about doing well in it, financing it well, just a lot of different things,” Robison said.

Even though staying up late at night to study for that test you forgot to take, it leads to spikes of stress and can cause later distractions.

“Part of any method to relieve a person’s stress will include at least getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. It’s also been proven that the things that you study at the last minute, like when you cram for a test, you’re less likely to remember it. So to relieve your stress you should study in small increments, over a period of time opposed to everything at once,” Williams said.

Stress Awareness month allows us to take the time and reflect on how we can make our lives a bit less stressful and overall more enjoyable. Testing is coming up shortly, so just take five minutes to relax and know that there is nothing to worry about.

“Just be confident that, at least at Johnson, we have some very qualified teachers. We have a good history of doing well on our tests, our students usually score some of the highest scores in the district. So, just the confidence, just going into the test with confidence is kinda of half the battle. Don’t listen to negative self talk that you’re not gonna do good or you’re not gonna do well. Tell yourself that you are prepared because our teachers are good about getting you prepared for the test and just know that you’re going to do well.” Williams said.