Sophomore Connor Engstrom

Managing many different classes and extracurricular activities can be stressful, especially when deadlines overlap. With multiple activities and classes, sophomore Connor Engstrom acknowledges that juggling all of them can be difficult to manage. For Engstrom, stress comes from a variety of sources. “The factors that cause stress are schoolwork, extracurricular activities and pressure from my parents and peers to succeed in these pursuits,” he said.

In an ideal world, the easiest solution to reduce stress would be to minimize the amount of work or stop activities that require excessive work. In order to complete an overwhelming amount of work in a certain timeframe, Engstrom has to sacrifice other priorities. “The stress affects me by detracting from my time to sleep and making me on edge a lot of the time,” he said.

As a sophomore, Engstrom still considers the academic workload to be manageable. “Being a sophomore is definitely more stressful than being a freshman,” he said. “I have no doubt that junior and senior year are going to be more stressful.”

Engstrom says that his main way to alleviate the stress caused by schoolwork is to try and stay in the moment. He adopts the mindset of dealing with each day’s challenges as they come. “I cope with stress by powering through as much as I can and just taking it one day at a time,” he said.

Among the actions that students can take to reduce the amount of stress in their lives, Engstrom thinks that changing his attitude will help. “I can take more time for myself and, frankly, try less hard to do everything perfectly,” he said. “Perfection is unattainable, and as the saying goes, it is the enemy of the good. Perhaps I need to ease up on the gas just a little.”