Final exams may be damaging to students

By: Bridget Askelson
Posted: 4/27/09
Final exams are touted as one last assessment of what students have learned, but they’re also one last chance to ruin their grades – or even health.
Regardless of the goal, finals nearly always result in a common emotion: fear. This is an emotion which triggers more negative side effects than positive, causing final exams to create more harm than help.
“Finals week” can be horrifying words to the ears of a college student. It immediately generates anxiety, constant second thoughts and long nights.
Stress is the most common negative effect of finals. The high expectations, grade percentage worries and massive amounts of information can cause even the most well-prepared and organized students to feel uneasy. And some finals end up counting for 10 percent of a student’s grade. With one entire letter grade being determined by a single test, stress is expected.
According to Stress Management from mindtools.com, tension can lead to many negative physical and mental side effects. When under such emotional turmoil, one’s immune system can become weakened and even permanently damaged. Headaches, acne, the common cold, irritable bowel syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis have been considered stress-related illnesses. Some experts even believe that cancer and stomach ulcers are a direct result of anxiety.
One of the most dangerous and prominent relations to stress and medical conditions is the heart attack. Blood pressure and heart rate rise when one is under stress causing unnecessary pressure on the arteries. The increasing amount of scar tissue created in arteries can reduce the amount of oxygen and blood reaching the heart and increase the chance of heart attacks.
This mental struggle has also been known to affect students’ psychological well-being. Students can become “burned out,” which causes extreme behavioral differences. People can be caused to rely on substances, such as drugs or alcohol, to compensate for their overwhelming stress. Ignoring simple tasks such as showering, brushing teeth, sleeping or eating could result in mood and action changes triggered by anxiety.
When a student is under stress they do not perform as well. If simple actions become too much to handle, then how can students write an essay in a tension-filled classroom or answer one hundred multiple choice questions surrounded by taping pencils and heavy sighs?
Finding a stress-free student is impossible. With work, school, bills and personal issues to contribute to stress, why should another tally be added to the scoreboard? It is unreasonable for students to risk so much for a single test.
Finals should not decide our fate in a course and should not put our mental and physical health at risk. © Copyright 2009 The Telescope

When Life’s A Grind, Teeth Feel Stress

By BARBARA ANDERSON |McClatchy Newspapers

April 17, 2009

The recession is a grind on people’s teeth as well as their pocketbooks.

Cracked and worn-down teeth, jaw pain and headaches are getting the attention of dentists — and stress is at the root of the problem, they say.

There’s no official data, no tooth-based economic indicator. But dentists are hard-pressed to explain what else besides stress from things like layoffs and home foreclosures would be the driving force behind the booming demand for tooth-repair services.

“We know that everybody’s under a lot of stress lately,” says Matthew Messina, a Cleveland, Ohio, dentist.

The body reacts to stress with a spurt of energy that enables a person to run or fight, Messina says, and people have to burn that excess energy off somewhere. Some do it at night by clenching or grinding their teeth.

Jennifer Brockman, 34, of Fresno, Calif., thought her tooth pain was from cavities until she saw Henry Cisneros, chief dental officer for Family Healthcare Network in Visalia, Calif.

She found out it’s “just stress on my teeth.”

Brockman began clenching and grinding her teeth in September when she was laid off from her job as a website designer for an Internet-based gift card business. Dental X-rays from a year prior showed no tooth damage, she says: “But the ones I just had a month ago do show it.”

It got so bad that one of her teeth broke in the past month.

Clenching and grinding, called “bruxism,” puts hundreds of pounds of pressure on tooth surfaces. Typically, chewing exerts 20 to 40 pounds on the teeth, but the pressure from grinding can be 250 pounds or more. Broken and chipped teeth are some of the results. But wear and tear isn’t the only result.

“When you clench your teeth, you can get pain behind the eyes, ringing in the ears, sinus pain, neck pain, headaches — it can even trigger migraines,” says David Wright, a Fresno dentist.

Breaking a clench-and-grind habit isn’t easy. Stress management techniques help some patients. But there’s more to solving the problem than just telling a patient to relax.

Many patients try over-the-counter night guards that prevent teeth from snapping together and allow muscles to relax. But while the one-size-fits-all devices can be relatively cheap (from $25 to about $150), they often don’t work well, dentists say. And custom-made appliances can be pricey, $900 or more.

A custom-made night guard might be worth the cost. A fractured tooth may need to pulled, or it could require a costly root canal or crown.

THE STRESS MESS: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times

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THE STRESS MESS: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times

Do you feel anxious about the economy? Does your mind sometimes race out of control? Are you feeling like your stress has become unmanageable?

We are all going through enormous changes right now. Many of us who previously believed that we had control over our lives and destiny suddenly feel overwhelmed. With the uncertain economy and global changes affecting our jobs, homes, and even our ability to buy groceries, how can we manage to remain happy and healthy as individuals and in our relationships?

“Stress is a global epidemic.” according to Kelsie Kenefick, author of the new book, The Stress Mess: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times. “People are feeling the stress right now and their health, both physically and mentally, is being challenged. Over 90% of doctor visits are stress related. Stress leads to anxiety, headaches, high blood pressure, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, panic attacks, heart disease and countless other symptoms.”

Kenefick contends that we can actually take control of stress, and the resulting symptoms, by learning how to respond to it rather than react. Instead of having a knee-jerk reaction when we experience stress, we can learn to respond to it with calm and clear-headed awareness that keeps the stress within our control. We can—and must—learn to calm the body and still the mind in order to think clearly and maintain our health.

The Stress Mess: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times is a clinically proven program that will teach you how to control symptoms of stress. It is the only stress management program that is scientific and measurable. Kenefick will have you charting your symptoms – anything from migraines to insomnia – so that you can track your improvement as you master the seven steps presented in the book.

The Stress Mess: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times is available through all major bookstores, Amazon, and naturallystressfree.com.

About the Author: Kelsie Kenefick, MPS, CBT, LMHC, is a professional speaker on the topic of stress and is the award winning author of Migraines Be Gone. As a biofeedback therapist and licensed counselor she has specialized in treating people with physical disorders resulting from, or exacerbated by, stress. Kelsie’s life-long exploration of human potential, combined with over 30 years of study in mind-body medicine, yoga and psychology, have provided the foundation for this unique and effective program.

Book Statistics
Title: The Stress Mess
Subtitle: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times
Author: Kelsie Kenefick

New age stressbusters

Do you react even to harmless jokes or quips? Do you try to do all work by yourself and thus get over-pressurised?Do you find it difficult to complete office work? Do you think of the negative side of things first? Do you tend to make a big issue out of nothing? Do you have a habit of complaining? Do you try to find flaws even when there is none? Do you feel dissatisfied with both home and work, and feel like you are compromising? If you have answered five or more question with a yes, then it’s time to sit back and take notice – you are stressed. Stress levels can be high or low. If you have mild tension and most answers were in the no, you are still in the green zone.But for the rest, it’s red alert.Stress is basically any kind of physical and mental tension. For some, it is in their nature to be tensed and easily exhausted. Also, domestic work, office pressure, deadlines, realationships can make you lose your cool and make you feel that you can’t keep up pace.The answer to this problem is not escaping from work, but time management, planning and stress management.Stress management Since there are no medicines or magical remedies for stress, one must adopt a few techniques to relieve themselves of this malaise.The first step is to find the root cause of stress. Ask yourself what factors at home, office or elsewhere raise your stress levels – can be anything from deadlines to the maid playing hookey — and note them down. Keep a diary of who or what gets you angry or uncomfortable, and what are the things that make you happy and you look forward to. Make diary writing a habit.Next is to consciously develop a positive attitude. Whenever you come under stress, pause for a few moments and think whether the situation is worth taking so much stress. Use logic to handle your thought process better even in stressful situations. If the situation is not under your control, then you must not mull too much over it.Also, people often get stressed thinking about the outcome, like in a project presentation or a child’s examination. Avoid worrying over such matters. Just plan your day, manage your time and let the rest follow.Lifestyle

modification Some small changes in the daily routine can work wonders. First, set your priorities. Then you can invest less time in the work that is less significant and thus, do all your work better. And this, of course, means you will be in a better mood.Build confidence in yourself. Tell yourself, “I can do it.” You will learn to believe in it and this will boost you. Also, learn to say ‘no’ when you feel you can’t or are unwilling to do something. You can’t make everyone happy, so don’t compromise yourself by saying ‘yes’ when you don’t want to.Keep some ‘me time’ and do what you like – read books, play games, walk, sleep, listen to music, anything.Change your regular routine.Don’t plunge into the kitchen or office work the moment you wake up. Go for a walk, stand in the balcony, relax. Also, during the whole day, it is a must that you maintain a diet regime — proper meals at proper time, especially breakfast.Atta, brown bread, brown rice, pasta are good stress busters. Unrefined carbohydrates helps control mood swings. Eat proteins like egg, nuts and seafood. Also, be careful of ‘emotional’ eating because of stress, like gorging on junk food.And light stretching exercises never fail to lift your mood. Meditation helps too. There is no miraculous cure for stress, but don’t worry.With faith in yourself, you can fight and get out of its clutches easily.

Manage Your Stress

April 15, 2009 – 12:00 a.m. EST

If you’re undergoing chronic stress, you can take steps to deal with it in healthy, positive ways like this man and women doing yoga.

Stress is taking its toll on a lot of people. In the newest “Stress in America” survey by the American Psychological Association (APA), almost half of Americans say they are increasingly stressed about their ability to provide for their family’s basic needs. Eighty percent say that the economy is a significant cause of stress.

Stress is the body’s response to the demands of the world. There are two basic kinds of stress, acute and chronic. According to the Mayo Clinic, acute stress is your body’s immediate reaction to a significant threat, challenge or scare. It’s the classic fight-or-flight reaction. Job interviews and fender-benders are examples of stressors that can cause acute stress.

Chronic stress results from long-term exposure to acute stress. Stressors that can lead to chronic stress are often the day-to-day pressures that don’t seem to let up — work problems, relationship issues and financial troubles.

Chronic stress can lead to physical problems such as headaches, fatigue, back pain, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, sleep problems, stomach upset and decreased immunity.

It can also affect your behavior, resulting in angry outbursts, over- or under eating, difficulty concentrating, social withdrawal, relational conflicts and drug or alcohol abuse.

According to the APA, the health consequences of extreme stress are most severe when people ignore symptoms and fail to manage their stress well.

Here are some ways that you can manage your stress:

Identify how you experience stress. Everyone experiences stress differently. You might get irritable, or have a hard time concentrating. Perhaps you get headaches or muscle tension. Keep track of your stress symptoms for several days to give you a better idea of how you respond.

Know your stress triggers. It’s important to know where your stress comes from. If you know, you can take steps to deal with the cause and not just the symptoms.

Find healthy ways to manage stress. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommends putting together a stress management plan that includes:

• Physical activity: Exercise releases endorphins, which promote good moods and positive thinking. It also increases blood flow to the brain and body, helping you feel better and think more clearly.

• Relaxation: Music, meditation, yoga and relaxation techniques help calm the body and the mind.

• Reaching out: Interacting with others lets you get your mind off your troubles and lift your spirits. It also keeps you from feeling alone. Talking with friends or professional counselors can be a good emotional outlet and a healthy way to work out problems.

• Taking care of yourself: Good nutrition and adequate rest go a long way toward giving your body what it needs to deal with stress. Junk food may feel good for a few minutes, but healthy food will help you feel good for a lot longer.

Stress is normal and something everyone experiences. But if you’re undergoing chronic stress, you can take steps to deal with it in healthy, positive ways.

Courtesy of Family Features

Stress At A Glance

• Stress is a normal part of life that can either help us learn and grow or can cause us significant problems.

• Stress releases powerful neurochemicals and hormones that prepare us for action (to fight or flee).

• If we don’t take action, the stress response can create or worsen health problems.

• Prolonged, uninterrupted, unexpected, and unmanageable stresses are the most damaging types of stress.

• Stress can be managed by regular exercise, meditation or other relaxation techniques, structured time-outs, and learning new coping strategies to create predictability in our lives.

• Many behaviors that increase in times of stress and maladaptive ways of coping with stress—drugs, pain medicines, alcohol, smoking, and eating—actually worsen the stress and can make us more reactive (sensitive) to further stress.

While there are promising treatments for stress, the management of stress is mostly dependent on the willingness of a person to make the changes necessary for a healthy lifestyle.

What are the signs and symptoms of poorly managed stress?

Excess stress can manifest itself in a variety of emotional, behavioral, and even physical symptoms, and the symptoms of stress vary enormously among different individuals. Common somatic (physical) symptoms often reported by those experiencing excess stress include sleep disturbances, muscle tension, headache, gastrointestinal disturbances, and fatigue. Emotional and behavioral symptoms that can accompany excess stress include nervousness, anxiety, changes in eating habits including overeating, loss of enthusiasm or energy, and mood changes. Of course, none of these signs or symptoms means for certain that there is an elevated stress level since all of these symptoms can be caused by other medical and/or psychological conditions.

It is also known that people under stress have a greater tendency to engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as excessive use or abuse of alcohol and drugs, cigarette smoking, and making poor nutritional choices, than their less-stressed counterparts. These unhealthy behaviors can further increase the severity of symptoms related to stress, often leading to a “vicious cycle” of symptoms and unhealthy behaviors.

The experience of stress is highly individualized. What constitutes overwhelming stress for one person may not be perceived as stress by another. Likewise, the symptoms and signs of poorly managed stress will be different for each person.

5 Steps to Great Time Management

Before you learn how to manage the resources of an organization, you must first be learning time management skills for your own life.

Time management skills are founded on this principle: If you don’t manage your own life, no one else will. Therefore it is essential that as a leader that you be proactive in every area of your life, including using your time. Don’t allow circumstances to cause you to react, but stay on top of it all with proper time

If you don’t fight for your own time, people will take it whenever they wish.

management.

Here you go, five simple steps to ultimate time management!

Once you start, don’t stop
The key to this is that once you start a task, don’t stop until you’re done. We have tendency to look at emails, or letters, read a few paragraphs and then put them aside for later reading.

What we don’t realize is that the time spent re-reading is precious time lost. So if you’re embarking on a task, finish it once in for all.

Make a list
Make a list of the major task you have for each day. Don’t write down too many because you won’t be able to finish it then. About 6 would be fine.

Plan how much time you will allocate to each task
For each task, allocate a reasonable time you would take to finish it. Say, half an hour, two hours and so on.

To be realistic, a good total time required to complete your tasks would be about 6 hours a day.

You must realize that you would have unplanned activities during the day as well and you must plan for that.

Plan your schedule for the day
Create a table with your working time (e.g. 8 am – 5pm) on a spreadsheet and start allocating activities to the various times of the day.

Do leave half an hour gaps in between major activities for a break, or for miscellaneous activities like checking email.

Prioritize your activities
Ensure that you prioritize your activities by putting the more important tasks first during the day where you have more energy.

Start making an effort to spend the first 10 minutes of your day to plan it with determination. It may seem hard at first, but it’s really worth every ounce of your effort.

Trust me, these 10 minutes of your extra effort to plan your time will reap you 200% increases in productivity during the day!

Lin Yihan is the founder of http://www.leadership-with-you.com, a website that seeks to groom and teach people how to become leaders in this generation that make a difference in our world. He is also the President of University-YMCA at Singapore Management University, a student-run volunteer organization that has a mission to raise up servant leaders who will impact the local and international community. It currently has several local community programs, overseas trips to countries like Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as a Social Enterprise arm that raises funds for its community work. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Yihan_Lin

Procrastination – How Not to Lose Track of Your Time on Important Tasks

Learning how to overcome procrastination is important. Managing how you use your time is vital for any successful entrepreneur. Remember the 80/20 rule, which only 20% of your tasks contribute to 80% of your success? Don’t get your time sucked into work that doesn’t help you. The procrastination bug truly is a ’silent killer’ in your business and life. Don’t let it kill your productivity.

I’ve got a 3-step strategy to help you.

-List Them All Down. You’re going to have duties, so write them down so you see an end result to your project. Start on the beginning day of your week. It might be Sunday. Mine is Monday so from there I list my tasks in no particular order. Position yourself for a productive week.

-Organize And Prioritize. I’ll ask myself “What’s the most important task(s) that going to help me get the results I’m seeking?” List by urgency and importance. You may have to rearrange the order a few times. Let me also note, things that are urgent but can be done on my own in under 3 minutes or less is given priority on top of the list. That way, I can check them off right away. An example would be “Write out fundraiser check and give to my daughter”.

-Musical Chairs? No, I don’t mean playing the game. I turn on some classical music if I’m at home. If I’m working on email responses or articles, I’ll be on the desk. So listen to soft, healing music with no words playing in the background. I take out my kitchen time alarm a set it 20-minute blocks. The idea that I only have 20 minutes broken up helps my focus and productivity. Give it a try. Since I work in 30-minute units, I have ten minutes to spare. Now, for ten minutes, I’ll do something to like take a walk outside (not inside on a treadmill unless the weather is bad), do bodyweight squats or pushups or stretch like doing “leg drains” with my feet propped up against the wall to help drive more blood into my head. Relaxing just helps my creative juices.

I’m Adriel Yapana. As a personal trainer and boot camp instructor, I know how hard it can be to drop stubborn body fat. To get FREE powerful, life-changing strategies, videos and finally stop the weight-loss battle, visit my website at http://fastfatlossworkouts.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adriel_Yapana

Time Management Tips – 3 Top Extrovert Strategies to Energize Your Time and Create Enthusiasm

Time management tips that fit your unique temperament are the ultimate energy tools. To select the right tools for your energy type, take the quiz below. If you discover you are an extrovert, you can use these specialized tips to open new doors to productivity, magnifying your effectiveness.

Extroverts’ strengths include their capacity to create social environments in which they thrive. In these settings, they cultivate strong professional relationships. Extroverts utilize their highly developed interpersonal skills to navigate with ease through the work world. Their genuine interest in others helps them listen intently, gather information and negotiate.

Quiz: Do You Possess an Extrovert Time and Energy Temperament?

1. _____ T/F: I do best when I’m actively engaged, not passively learning.
2. _____ T/F: I am energized by group collaborations.
3. _____ T/F: My creativity is fueled through brainstorming with others.

 
If you answer these questions with “True”, then the 3 tips in this article apply directly to you. Briefly stated, your extrovert strength multiplies when you expend energy through engaging with others. At the same time, you may find your effectiveness erodes when you work on your own.

3 Ways Extroverts Can Amplify Their Productivity

1. Identify the tasks you find difficult or bothersome, and handle them first thing. If you seek out others for stimulation before attending to annoying project details, your final product may suffer. So overcome the urge to procrastinate. Start with the objectionable work and get it over with. Then you’ll be free to make enjoyable and productive use of the rest of the day with clear conscience.
2. Recognize introverted coworkers and capitalize on their strengths. Sidestep the extrovert trap of dismissing introverts. Use your social intuition to respectfully draw them out, learning how they can best contribute to any group endeavor. Try cooperatively establishing ways to exchange information, perhaps through emails, text messaging or sharing one to one. In that way, each party’s comfort zone is respected, data is collected, and no one feels stranded or engulfed.
3. Use your extrovert expertise to create powerful and congenial teams. Identify which introverts you work with most easily, and delegate tasks to them that can be handled independently. Encourage your more extroverted co-workers to collaborate and independently develop a team approach that maximizes the potentials of each individual.

 

Since comprehension fuels creativity, always be on the lookout for fresh possibilities as you explore your unique relationships with others. The more accurately you map out each contributor’s realm of competence, the more creatively you can guide your “smart groups”, as they devise synergistic working systems. You and your colleagues may be amazed by how dramatically the integrated effectiveness of such collaboration surpasses the sum of its individual parts.

So now, ask yourself: How can you use your unique extrovert qualities to jump-start your personal productivity?

To take your next step, sign up for our free gift, “The New Finding Time Boundary Template: 9 Simple, Sequential Steps to Find More Time and Recharge Your Energy!” at http://www.findingtime.net/ezine.html This time template will help you move beyond overwhelm, disappointment, and frustration. Using a workbook format, with room to record your answers, you will discover that 24 hours really are enough! And for even more time thoughts and techniques, visit our blog at http://www.thetimefinder.com Offered by Paula Eder, Ph.D., The Time Finder Expert. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paula_Eder