Finals Week (Unusual) Stress Management Techniques

We’ve all heard the basic ways to deal with stress: lead a healthier lifestyle, remove the source of stress, take a nap, and squeeze a stress ball until you stop seeing red.

But those don’t work for everyone. You might be one of many people looking for a new way to cope with stress as you get closer to college finals and college graduation. That’s why I made a list of some “unusual” ways to handle the stress in your life.

Puppies. Lots of Puppies.
This should come as no surprise to anyone, but puppies are just about some of the cutest things on the planet. So many YouTube videos are made popular just by the presence of adorable puppies.

That’s why colleges have started building puppies into their curriculum. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.Here’s an article about Dalhousie University where they give their students an opportunity to play with therapeutic puppies during finals week. These puppies are located in “puppy rooms” that students can visit and shed the stress. That definitely sounds like a school that I want to be a part of.

Drink Orange Juice
Eating healthy is a common route for handling stress, but have you ever wondered why? The typical explanation is that if you are healthier, you can deal with problems easier because you are a clearer mind. However, a recent psychology study gives another, more specific way to consider healthy eating: Pursue items that are rich in Vitamin C, such as orange juice.

The study reflects that people who have high levels of Vitamin C in their system don’t show the normal signs of stress when exposed to the same instagators. They also “bounce back” faster after stressful situations than those with lower levels of Vitamin C.

Visualize Yourself As A Tree
Stay with me on this one. I know it sounds like a ridiculous mantra that you might hear from a cartoon that is satirizing stress techniques, but this list of relaxation techniques thinks otherwise. This method is meant for those who don’t feel strong enough in their day-to-day lives. You are meant to imagine that you’re a strong oak tree, withstanding the everyday issues with ease.

I’m not saying that this necessarily works with everyone, but at its heart, it works. Maybe you don’t want to imagine that you’re an oak tree, but I think that any kind of visualization technique can help anyone who feels stress. All it takes is a few seconds of closing your eyes and seeing yourself as something or someone that is stronger than you are, and you’ll feel a little more confident in your life.

Go Scream
No, don’t go watch all the Scream movies (unless you think that might help). I’m suggesting that you scream at the top of your lungs. In a list of relaxation methods from CNN

Before you just start screaming in your room until your neighbors knock down your door, you should probably go somewhere that is very open, like a park. When you scream like that, you have an outlet for the stress and anger that has been building up. Believe me, it works. Students at Michigan State University, for example, always scream at midnight during finals week, as I’m sure other schools do as well.

Maybe you have your own unusual techniques to handle stress, but just give some of these a shot. I mean, do you need more of an excuse to drink orange juice and play with puppies? I don’t think so.

Undergrad Success would like to thank myFootPath and Alexander Diedrick for this post. Alexander is a television writing and production student at Columbia College of Chicago. When he’s not in class or working on his own scripts, Alexander is a writing intern at myFootpath.