Catching Your Z's and Stress: Making it Work for You

Last night I attended the skills development workshop based on the importance of sleep and  methods of dealing with text anxiety.  A doctor from the Gable Health Center opened the workshop with a discussion about why sleep is so important.  Some of the things that sleep affects includes your memory, behavior, nervous & immune system, growth, and your mood.  Obviously, these things are essential to function throughout the day, which is why it is sleep is a significant factor in one's daily routine. As college students, we should be getting 7-9 hours of sleep daily in order to feel fully rejuvenated for the following day.  This will help with test performances and anxiety issues as well.  

Speaking of tests, one major thing I learned from the workshop involved the harm in pulling all-nighters.  They are not recommended because they work against you.  If you have a big test and decide to stay up all night studying, you are going to do worse than if you sleep for a few hours.  This is because your memory shuts down when it is deprived of sleep.  In fact, sleep is where we form our memories, so it is clear as to why pulling an all-nighter would actually hurt you.  Also, if you consume any caffeine while studying, it is recommended to consume caffeine when you take your test the next morning.  The reason being involves the way our brain stores and accesses memories.  It is easiest to access certain memories when we are under the same conditions as we were when they were made.    

 

Finally, another doctor from the counseling center steered the topic towards dealing with stress and anxiety.  Like the first doctor, this doctor also suggested that sleep is an important part of keeping yourself healthy mentally.  He also stressed that exercising is one of, or if not the best way to relieve stress.  But the most important thing to do is to start becoming aware of stress in our lives.  Something as simple as a stomach ache can be an effect of stress, which is why it gets so overlooked.  Identifying stress is ultimately the only way we can begin to heal it.  

 

In conclusion, I thought this workshop was beneficial, especially with final exams coming up in the near future.  I learned insightful information about sleep and anxiety, and will definitely be applying it in my own life, especially the tips about sleep.  Out of all the workshops I attended, this one, to me, was the most interesting and helpful in taking what I have learned and applying it to my own life.