ENGLRES- Research project

Stress of DLSU Undergraduate Students: Turning it Beneficial Thesis statement: The focal point of this study is to determine the positive effects of stress and to edify undergraduate students on how to properly utilise stress.

When one hears the word stress, the first thing that comes to mind for most people would be how it affected them negatively when they had undergone a situation too tough. There is probably just a small fraction of people who thinks otherwise since it has been plastered on our minds that stress always produces detrimental effects and that to avoid experiencing it, they should engage in various activities that eases their minds and bodies. There are only a few books that discuss how a person’s perspective can influence his or her’s stress level. According to Selye (n.d.), "Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one." In the everyday lives of students, there are certain routines that each and every student follows --- wake up, take a bath, get dressed, eat breakfast, go to school, study, go home, and the list of chores can go on and on. The cycle does not end. In some cases, the repetition of these activities produces tension, which can evolve to stress itself. Time and time again, one can overhear someone delineate that the reason why they are acting like that is because of stress. This scenario is oftentimes used by students in conversations, for example “Oo eh, stressed na stressed na ako dahil sa requirements.” (I am so stressed because of the requirements.) or “Kasi stressed ako nun, kaya ganun ang nangyari.” (It’s because of stress that’s why that happened.) They have been using stress as their explanation for an action they had done because typically, the connotation for stress is inclined more on its obstructiveness. Many studies believe that stress has dreadful effects in multiple behaviors such as in sleeping, and in eating. Consequently, procrastination, sleep deprivation, poor performance, tardiness, and

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other bad habits become more prominent in students due to the demands of the school or university. This research aims to stir De La Sallian’s outlook on stress since there has been many misconceptions about stress. Another focal point of this study is to determine the positive effects of stress and to edify undergraduate students on how to properly utilise stress for their convenience. Stress can be applied in different fields, such as in psychology, in biology, in music, in athletics, etc. However, what the researchers would be focusing more on is how it is defined by psychologists. For psychologists, they describe stress whenever there is tension and pressure present which either constraints or urges oneself to perform better. Stress can be distinguished in two ways: eustress and dystress. The difference between eustress and dystress is easy; eustress can be represented as good stress whereas dystress is bad stress. Activities that give off a positive vibe to a person is how one can feel eustress. Although there is good stress, dystress is more abundant among students. Events such as failing a test, not being able to submit on time and any event similar to the ones stated can cause dystress to a student. Based on a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (2014), teens, nowadays, say that the stress they have been undergoing is much higher than what working adults had reported in the past few months. There are different kinds of stress that can further provide someone with more profound information on how threatening the stress that that person experiences in his or her life. The first kind of stress, which is the primary one, is acute stress. It is the most basic one because it is caused by the pressure of the daily demands experienced by everyone (Sincero, 2009). Acute stress is responsible in bringing about joy, excitement, and pleasure in one’s life. But as the

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saying goes, “too much of something is bad for everyone”, overindulgence in acute stress is damaging both to the body and mind. This kind of stress is called episodic stress. On the report of the American Psychological Association (n.d.), the ones who are more susceptible to be experiencing this kind of stress would be those who “have been afflicted by acute stress frequently, whose lives are so disordered that they are studies in chaos and crisis. They take on too much, have too many irons in the fire, and can’t organize the slew of self-inflicted demands and pressures clamoring for their attention.” People who have personalities referred to as “Type A” has a high chance of having this kind of stress as well. Type A’s are normally more aggressive than usual, impatient, and too competitive, enabling them to be more at risk in developing coronary heart diseases. The last kind of stress and the most malign among the three is chronic stress. When someone undergoes a certain situation that has been creating a long-term stress to that person, then one can infer that he or she is having chronic stress. This stress can also be caused by the prolonged duration of a body’s defence mechanism towards stress (Girdano, Everly Jr., and Dusek, 2001). Occasionally, chronic stress is the origin of illnesses like cancer, heart attack, stroke and psychological problems. Hans Selye, the founding father of G.A.S, believed that stress can be the result of the body’s response to any demand (BrainHQ, 2013). Because of this, he was able to fathom out how stress

instigates change in mental and physical patterns and later named this medical

problem as the General-Adaptation Syndrome or G.A.S. “Flight-or-fight” is the highlight of the first of the three stages in Selye’s General-Adaptation Syndrome, which is Alarm. In this stage, the nervous system will channel the brain to exert most of its energy in getting all the other systems to work together in rejecting the effects of stress. Hastings (2004) substantiates this with

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his claim that, “Normal body activities such as the digestive and immune functions are blunted or nearly shut down in order to supply resources to more immediate muscular and emotional needs.” The second stage is resistance, wherein the consistency of stress’ impact on a person is what to be considered crucial. Once an individual is accustomed to the sensation caused by stress, reduction in energy levels will come soon after. However, the body and the immune system becomes more impervious despite the high level of stress. This then triggers modifications in mental behavioural patterns as well as in physical behavioural patterns. Exhaustion is the last stage in the General-Adaptation Syndrome. When the body is incapable of enduring stress, the parts of the body will slowly fail to do their jobs and it will start to deteriorate. A person’s body will become more penetrable to illnesses if it enters the exhaustion stage. For a normal person, several things can be considered as a stressor and the same can be said for students, specifically students from De La Salle University. Anything that keeps you away from being yourself causes stress (Tatareva, n.d). Stress, like air, is one of the most abundant things in our environment. Every creature emits and receives stress. According to Dr. Zuccolo (2013), stress can be triggered through physical or psychological means. Physical stress involves stressors that are acquired using the five senses, the sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch. Physical stressors, such as pain, are stressors that imposes the body to react to an object that is trying to harm a person’s physical structure. Sickness or illness, which frequently produces pain, are considered as physical pain since the illness exhibits signs and symptoms that the body might be in danger and the body’s physical structure is attacked or in danger. On the

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other hand, psychological stressors are the most common stressors that everyone encounters in their daily lives. Additionally, psychological stressors are categorized into two categories, real or perceived. Real stressors are produced through perceiving an incoming threat or stressor that is based on reality that may objectively occur. However, perceived stressors are produced by the same mechanism but are often exaggerated or might never occur. Furthermore, the four principal sources of stress are from environmental, social, physiological, and cognitive-emotional. First, environmental stressors are stressors which is acquired through the environment such as pollution, traffic, or disturbing images. Second, social stressors are triggered when demands are made on one’s time or skills such as job interviews, public speaking, balancing schedules, etc. Third, physiological stressors are stressors produced through prior stages in a person’s life such as adolescence, poor nutrition, menopause, etc. Lastly, cognitive-emotional stressors are stressors triggered by thoughts, the body is conducting a “threat-assessment” which determines how an event or object might harm that person. In the survey the researchers had administered to 41 undergraduate students of De La Salle University-Manila, they inquired about how various factors namely: roommate, distance of the university from home, being away from home, financial, transportation, academics, family, friends, organizations, intimate relationships, lack of time, and unhappiness — distributed to their stress levels. First, a student’s education system can affect his/her stress levels. An average filipino spends 8-12 hours of his or her time at school. De La Salle University - Manila (DLSU-M) is an institution located near Vito Cruz and Quirino operating in a trimester system. The school has a total count of 24,880 undergraduate students last Term 1 AY 2014 - 2015. The undergraduate

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students are expected to overcome the challenges that the students might face in the university while improving their character to achieve the LaSallian excellence embedded into the students. However, the challenges or obstacles that are surrounding the students’ lives every day can be perceived by the students as one of the main producers of stressors in their daily lives. With the help of the survey the researchers made regarding stress, they were able to discover that students are mostly stressed due to their academics vis-à-vis their lack of time to perform certain tasks. Some students feel unhappy towards their lives and feel demotivated to continue their tasks because of the bombardment of requirements given to them. On one hand, the researchers think that the stressors might be an indicator whether the students can adapt to their environment and are really worthy of achieving the Expected Lasallian Graduate Attributes (ELGA) which is similar to the theory of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin. Furthermore, the stressors assist the students through aiding them to improve and change their lifestyle which teaches the students to handle challenges efficiently and moulding them to receive the ELGA. Unfortunately, with the 8 - 12 hours time allocated for academic learning, students somehow are expected to give more of their household or rest time for schoolworks and projects, which might result to deciding whether to avoid sleeping or submit a lesser quality assignment due to cramming. Second, a student’s household can also affect his or her stress levels. The survey suggests that most of the students are having problems with the distance of the university from their home, family, and even homesickness. Most of their participants do not live in condos or dorms which makes roommates be considered as not a stressor. Having said that, they live with their families whose houses are located farther than some. Some undergraduate students of DLSU who do not live near the university are having a hard time transporting through the busy streets

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of Manila for them to go back to their household homes which eventually takes toll on their time allotted for doing academic works and rest. Additionally, some families might be having some difficulties with the relationship of the parents or their relationship with each other. These problems can have an effect on a person’s psychological aspects and improves their stress level by having an unstable environment. Lastly, environmental stress is stress that is produced by the pressure on the environment based on human activities or by natural events such as change in weather, storms, famine, etc. Environmental stress usually challenges an individual to cope with the changes in the environment. The environmental factors pressures the individual to adjust with his or her environment which causes a physical or psychological unpleasant reaction to the individual. Stress is a natural automated action that can be perceived as positive or negative by an individual. Stress is perceived as positive if it motivates the individual to perform his or her tasks better. On the other hand, negative stress is perceived as threatening by an individual which triggers the “flight-or-fight” response planted in the human body. These kinds of stress both exhibit a positive and negative effect to the human body, both physical and psychological. According to Lupien (2010), the adolescence period of the human species is associated with high stress which might be due to the increase of sex levels. The human brain of people undergoing adolescence are also highly sensitive to stress. Too much stress in the human body can cause physical and mental problems to the body. Stress is known to weaken our immune system, compromising the protective barriers of our body and making the body susceptible to autoimmune illnesses such as colds, Addison disease, etc. Moreover, Stress can also cause body aches, headaches, chest pains, inability to sleep, change in libido, fatigue. Additionally, stress

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causes psychological problems such as anxiety, restlessness, lack of motivation, irritability or anger, mood swings, sadness, and depression. Stress can also cause sudden weight gain or loss to an individual due to an increase or decrease of the person’s appetite. However, extreme stress or chronic stress can push an individual to use or abuse harmful substances such as drugs, alcohol or cigarettes. Stress can also cause an individual to be distanced from his or her friends or from the society. In spite of that, the power of stress can also affect the body and mind positively. According to Knowlton (n.d), stress is most likely developed to create a great motivating force in an individual. Knowlton specified that stress can be a cognitive and a physical enhancer. First, stress can be utilized as a mental enhancer to improve our mental performance. Stress helps a person expand their own mental capabilities since stress has the ability to help the brain narrow down different objects and focus on the single challenge at hand. For instance, students are well known for being capable of juggling different tasks and keeping sane, this might be due to their ability to plan ahead their activities. This can be supported with the result of the survey about the question, “Do you work well under stress?”. Out of 41 respondents, 21 answered yes. This goes to show that even though students are being bombarded with requirements to submit, they still find ways to get their work done on time. Additionally, stress can also improve a person’s memory and his or her ability to recall due to high levels of cortisone. However, extremely high levels of cortisone can affect the hippocampus or the memory storage part of a person’s brain negatively. Stress can also motivate an individual to be in control to complete his/her goal. Lastly, stress can be utilized as a physical enhancer to increase our physical capabilities. Stress is said to increase a person’s energy and stamina due to the sudden adrenaline rush

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stressed beings get in the “flight or fight” instinct. A good example would be when a person is in a drastic situation Stress can also increase a person’s belief in oneself making him/her able to do anything. Additionally, stress can also improve a person’s body function or coordination. Identifying the negative effects of stress is as easy as counting 1, 2, 3 because of the negative associations people have in their minds and also the negative experiences from those encounters. However, stress is not entirely unhealthy. Stress heightens a person’s potential in reminiscing past experiences and also their focus. This influence can be more abundant among students based on how they perceive stress. It all starts from there. Practicing time management or indulging in new activities that lessens the impact of stress would be irrelevant if the mindset of a person about stress would still be the same as before which is viewing every incident one experiences as a hardship. How a person grasps the situation at hand is the key in turning the negative effects that people have already gone used to into positive effects. Once this is done, then it will only be right for someone to engage in different activities to reduce the tension in their minds and bodies. The researchers suggest that a person should remain to have an optimistic view about his or her daily challenges to be able to overcome the challenge easier. Moreover, the burden of anticipating the impact of the stress can cause further stress and anxiety to the individual that is why it is advised to concentrate on what is happening now. The study about the stress of DLSU undergraduate students and how to turn it beneficial would benefit students that are currently experiencing stress. First, the study corrects any misconceptions about the topic by giving a clearer look on what stress is. Second, it informs the readers that stress must not be regarded as a negative element exclusively. Although stress is known to be detrimental, it has its own share of positive effects. The research provides them

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ideas about how they can properly utilize stress and help future researchers about the topic at hand. It also imparts information on things that can be deemed as stressors for students so to alarm the students on the probability of them acquiring stress from the stated stressors.

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