School, disagreements with friends and family, over-packed schedules, making mistakes, and procrastinating can all cause a person to feel or be stressed out. The things that stress us out have one thing in common: they can be tamed or avoided.

Stress is defined as  “a state of mental oremotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances,” and is one thing that everyone has to deal with.

People can be stressed out by many factors. “School, sports, and family can sometimes stress me out,” said Will Hoffmann, ‘20.

Whether it’s that late assignment, a big upcoming competition, or a disagreement with a family member, everyone copes with stress in  different ways.

“When I am stressed, I like to watch Netflix or something like that, and play basketball,” said Hughie Doyle, ‘21.

Doing activities that help with the effects of stress is important because it allows us to be more healthy and makes us feel better about ourselves. Stress relieving activities allow for a more positive mood, boost the immune system, and help with productivity. Everyone does different activities that they enjoy to relieve stress, but it is possible to attempt to avoid stress.

Although stress can not fully be avoided, we can do our best to prevent excess stress.

Julia Crawford, ‘18, advises, “Do not wait until the last minute for things; basically you just want to spread everything out.”

Waiting until the last minute is a big factor in extra, unneeded stress. It can also make your memory worse, make activities take longer to complete, and can cause bad grades or poor work performance.  In aiming to avoid our stress completely, we should try our hardest to work on things in small amounts over a longer period of time.

Stress can be a very annoying aspect that everyone has to deal with in their life. Using all of the ways to cope with stress or avoiding  it altogether will make you feel better about the stressors in your life.