Opinions. Need to vent? Contact the editor at opinions@theotherpress.ca School of Thought: Addressing stress By Natalie Serafini, Opinions Editor t’s the second half of the semester, with students having recently returned from the study break, and we're all decidedly unrefreshed. The break either allows for leisure time, or opens the door to midterm studying and essay writing—depending on your interpretation—and it’s left many students shuffling back to classes in despondence. A book recently released by Dr. David Posen, Is Work Killing You? A Doctor’s Prescription for Treating Workplace Stress, argues that stress is contributing to burnout and low-productivity, as well as bad health. College and university students are certainly feeling the burnout, but how’s their health? And how well are students dealing with stress? For Alena Bailey, the pressure is in the balance of work and school. “I think work is more stressful than school for me because I’m only taking three classes. So having the time to do my schoolwork and then go to work is more stressful for me,” she said. When asked how her workload influences her health, Bailey said, “When I have to work a certain amount of hours and then I have to come home and do homework for a certain amount of hours, I don’t really sleep or I don’t eat.” In terms of her health, Deepinder Kaur said that her stress sometimes causes her to make less healthy choices, stating that “I eat more when I’m stressed.” Jasveen Kaur felt that her study habits were partly to blame for her taxing workload, stating that “I don’t know if it’s stressful, I guess we make it stressful.” Asked about her workload, Gurpinder Gaidu said “I guess it depends if you have a job or not, or priorities at home. I have responsibilities as an older sister, but other than that I don’t work, so my stress load is average.” Catherine Torguro said that her high expectations for herself were “the most stressful” in terms of her strain level. International students had an interesting perspective to lend in terms of pressure. One student, Singh, juggles work and school because “I am an international student here and that’s a big deal because we have to pay about three times more than the fees of domestic students. That’s why I have to work—if I don’t want to work, I can’t pay my fees.” Singh also has to ensure that he gets good grades, stating “If I don’t get good marks, | have to do the course again, and the fee of one course is $1,500, and I have to pay again and again. That’s why I have to study.” My own stress level is perhaps not as bad as many other people’s, and it would be much more manageable if I didn’t procrastinate so much. I’m technically a part-time student with three classes, I juggle the equivalent of two jobs with my responsibilities for The Other Press and other media, and | attempt to maintain a social life. It’s definitely not the amount of work that I have, though, but the way that I manage my time. If I was to cut back on a few of the hours a day spent mindlessly staring at a screen, I’d likely have plenty of time to study and work. But as much as my—and Don't let trolls trip you up Engaging in online debate is unproductive By Aidan Mouellic, Contributor he older we get, the more aware we become of what goes on around us. We discover politics, sex, religion, drugs, sickness, and health. We also develop our own views on these topics. These views influence the directions we take in life, and are also the topics that polarize people the most. Canadian society allows people to believe anything they want. If you want to, you can 16 believe you're a tree or a table, and that’s okay. You might be certified, but you have the right to believe anything. Oftentimes though, beliefs pull people apart. I hope you have found a cause in your life that you believe is worth fighting for. Having direction makes life more meaningful, and also makes you feel good about contributing to an area in society that you think needs work. Inevitably, you will encounter people who disagree with what you believe in, and who hold extreme views. These people who clash with your views go by a lot of names: trolls, extremists, assholes, and other more poignant terms. For the sake of sounding dignified, I will just call them outliers. Outliers are the ones whose views you find completely ridiculous. Chances are you have weeded out these individuals from your group of close friends, but you might find these outliers at work, in the media, in your class, or more likely, on the Internet. The drivel that they spew makes you angry that people could hold such asinine beliefs, and you end up spending a large portion of your time engaging with the outliers in hopes of making them realize that they are completely wrong and that they are harming society with their backwards way of thought. Stop this now. I’m sure many other students’ — study habits aren’t the most ideal, there’s something to be said for the amount of work expected of college and university students. Many students balance school and homework with a job and social life, and if anything’s going to fall to the wayside, it will likely be health. The “freshman fifteen” is a hallmark of the college student's scale, buying The shock and rage that these individuals trigger within you makes it difficult to turn away from their comments, but engaging them will not change anything. The ones who hold far out beliefs have been developing these notions for a long time, and one late night debate on Reddit likely won’t change their mindset. All you accomplish by having an intellectual war online is wasting time that could be spent productively furthering your cause. You will create bigger changes in society if you focus on the big picture. As cliché as that sounds, it’s true. Change the way a crowd thinks, and more people will join the crowd; change the way one person Photo courtesy of bottled_void (Flickr) healthy food on the cheap is always difficult, and binge drinking isn’t the stuff health dreams are made of. There are a lot of expectations to meet, and well-being will often be ignored, but it’s something all of us need to address; although being busy and still healthy is something most of us will probably struggle with for years, it’s definitely a worthy endeavour. thinks and the impact is smaller. It’s more effective to go after a larger audience instead of the outliers who are the most difficult to change. But hey, if you want to try turning Glenn Beck into a staunch liberal, good luck! It is easy to get distracted and discouraged by people who do not share your beliefs, but remember your goals and stick to them. The radical outliers will always be around, and if you want to be successful, you need to learn how to not be affected by them—learn to brush them away. Or you can just repeat to yourself, “Do not feed the trolls.”