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Financial aid and school loans: If you have ever stood 

in the financial aid office during the first week 

of school, you could write a book on the topic of 

stress. The cost of a college education is skyrock-

eting, and the pressure to pay off school loans after 

graduation can make you feel like an indentured 

servant. Assuming you qualify for financial aid, 

you should know that receiving the money in time 

to pay your bills is rare. Problems are compounded 

when your course schedule gets expunged from 

computer records because your financial aid check 

was 2 weeks late. These are just some of the prob-

lems associated with financial aid.

 

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Budgeting your money: It’s one thing to ask your 

parents to buy you some new clothes or have 

them pick up the check at a restaurant. It’s quite 

another when you start paying all your own bills. 

Learning to budget your money is a skill that 

takes practice. And learning not to overextend 

yourself is not only a skill, but also an art in these 

tough economic times. At some time or other, 

everyone bounces a check. The trick to avoid 

doing it is not to spend money you do not have 

and to live within your means.

 

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Lifestyle behaviors: The freedom to stay up until 

2:00 a.m. on a weekday, skip a class, eat nothing 

but junk food, or take an impromptu road trip 

carries with it the responsibilities of these actions. 

Independence from parental control means bal-

ancing freedom with responsibility. Stress enters 

your life with a vengeance when freedom and 

responsibility are not balanced.

 

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Peer groups and peer pressure (drugs and alcohol): 

There is a great need to feel accepted by new 

acquaintances in college, and this need often 

leads to succumbing to peer pressure—and in 

new environments with new acquaintances, peer 

pressure can be very strong. Stress arises when 

the actions of the group are incongruent with 

your own philosophies and values. The desire to 

conform to the group is often stronger than your 

willpower to hold your own ground.

 

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Exploring sexuality: Although high school is the 

time when some people explore their sexuality, 

this behavior occurs with greater frequency 

during the college years, when you are away from 

the confines of parental control and more assertive 

College Stress

What makes the college experience a significant depar-

ture from the first 18 years of life is the realization that 

with the freedom of lifestyle choices come the respon-

sibilities that go with it. Unless you live at home while 

attending school, the college experience is one in which 

you transition from a period of dependence (on your par-

ents) to independence. As you move from the known into 

the unknown, the list of stressors a college student expe-

riences is rather startling. Here is a sample of some of the 

more common stressors that college students encounter:

 

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Roommate dynamics: Finding someone who is 

compatible is not always easy, especially if you 

had your own room in your parents’ house. As 

we all know or will quickly learn, best friends 

do not make the best roommates, yet roommates 

can become good friends over time. Through it 

all, roommate dynamics involve the skills of com-

promise and diplomacy under the best and worst 

conditions. And should you find yourself in an 

untenable situation, remember, campus housing 

does its best to accommodate students and resolve 

problems. However, their time schedule and yours 

may not always be the same. For those college stu-

dents who don’t leave home, living as an adult in a 

home in which your parents and siblings are now 

roommates can become its own form of stress.

 

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Professional pursuits: What major should I choose? 

Perhaps one of the most common soul-searching 

questions to be asked in the college years is, What 

do I want to do the rest of my life? It is a well-

known fact that college students can change 

majors several times in their college careers, and 

many do. The problem is compounded when 

there is parental pressure to move toward a spe-

cific career path (e.g., law or medicine) or the 

desire to please your parents by picking a major 

that they like but you don’t.

 

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Academic deadlines (exams, papers, and projects): 

Academics means taking midterms and finals, 

writing research papers, and completing projects. 

This is, after all, the hallmark of measuring what 

you have learned. With a typical semester load of 

fifteen to twenty credits, many course deadlines 

can fall on the same day, and there is the ever-

present danger that not meeting expectations can 

result in poor grades or academic probation.

 

The Nature of Stress

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tend to throw things off balance as well. Exercises 1.1 to 

1.5 invite you to reflect on these issues.

The Sociology of Stress

Today’s world is a very different place than when 

Walter Cannon coined the term “fight-or-flight 

response” and Hans Selye first uttered the words, 

“general adaptation syndrome.” Little did they know 

just how much stress would become a part of the social 

fabric of everyday life in the 21st century. Some experts 

argue that our collective stress is a result of our inability 

to keep up with all the changes that influence the many 

aspects of our lives. Simply stated, our physiology has 

not evolved at a comparable rate as the social changes 

of the last half-century.

Holmes and Rahe, the creators of the Social Readjust-

ment Rating Scale, were dead-on about various social 

aspects that can destabilize one’s personal equilibrium, 

even with the best coping skills employed. Yet no 

matter what corner of the global village you live in, the 

stresses of moving to a new city or losing a job are now 

compounded by significant 21st-century issues. We are 

a product of our society, and societal stress is dramati-

cally on the rise.

Experts who keep a finger on the pulse of humanity 

suggest that as rapid as these changes are now, the rate 

and number of changes are only going to increase. 

It’s not just the changes we encounter that affect our 

stress levels, it’s how we engage in these new changes. 

Increasingly, this engagement is online. Unfortu-

nately, the stress that is provoked is real, not virtual. 

The majority of interactive Web sites are littered with 

negative comments, frustrations, expletives, and rants, 

all of which suggest a malaise in the general public 

combined with the unparalleled freedom to honestly 

express oneself anonymously. Being overwhelmed 

with choices in communication technology for staying 

in touch with friends, colleagues, and employees leads 

to a whole new meaning of burnout.

Physiology, psychology, anthropology, theology—

the topic of stress is so colossal that it is studied by 

researchers in a great many disciplines, not the least of 

which is sociology. Sociology is often described as the 

study of human social behavior within family, organi-

zations, and institutions: the study of the individual in 

relationship to society as a whole. Because everybody is 

born into a family and most people work for a living, 

with your self-expression. With the issue of sexual 

exploration come questions of values, contracep-

tion, pregnancy, homosexuality, bisexuality, AIDS, 

abortion, acceptance, and impotence, all of which 

can be very stressful.

 

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Friendships: The friendships made in college take 

on a special quality. As you grow, mature, and 

redefine your values, your friends, like you, will 

change, and so will the quality of each friend-

ship. Cultivating a quality relationship takes 

time, meaning you cannot be good friends with 

everyone you like. In addition, tensions can 

quickly mount as the dynamics between you and 

those in your close circle of friends come under 

pressure from all the other college stressors.

 

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Intimate relationships: Spending time with one 

special person with whom you can grow in love 

is special indeed. But the demands of an intimate 

relationship are strong, and in the presence of a 

college environment, intimate relationships are 

under a lot of pressure. If and when the relation-

ship ends, the aftershock can be traumatic for 

one or both parties, leaving little desire for one’s 

academic pursuits.

 

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Starting a professional career path: It’s a myth that 

you can start a job making the same salary that 

your parents make, but many college students 

believe this to be true. With this myth comes the 

pressure to equal the lifestyle of one’s parents the 

day after graduation. (This may explain why so 

many college graduates return home to live after 

graduation.) The perceived pressures of the real 

world can become so overwhelming that seniors 

procrastinate on drafting a resume or initiating 

the job search until the week of graduation.

For the nontraditional college student, the problem can 

be summarized in one word: balance! Trying to bal-

ance a job, family, and schoolwork becomes a juggling 

act extraordinaire. In attempting to satisfy the needs of 

your supervisor, colleagues, friends, spouse, children, 

and parents (and perhaps even pets), what usually is 

squeezed out is time for yourself. In the end everything 

seems to suffer. Often schoolwork is given a lower pri-

ority when addressing survival needs, and typically this 

leads to feelings of frustration over the inadequacy of 

time and effort available for assignments or exams. Of 

course, there are other stressors that cross the bound-

aries between work, home, and school, all of which 

Chapter 1

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