It’s toward the end of the year and everything is starting to get heavy and stressful. With finals coming up and summer just around the corner, some Doherty students are feeling pressure. Everyone has their own ways of managing stress, and they each have different things that are causing this stress and making the end of year worse for them. 

Students around the school were asked about how they’re handling stress and what their thoughts are as we get closer to the end of the year. The first question that was asked was, “How are you managing your stress levels going into finals and the end of the year?” A freshman, Conner Kurts-Gonsales answered with “I don’t know… studying everything is stressful but food.” Not the best answer, but what helps him helps him. After that, I asked him “If you don’t have food, how are you going to manage your stress?” It took him a while to think of an answer, but when he did, his answer was “Go home and do all of the studying there.”

A sophomore, Halo White, was asked “What would you recommend to another student that is struggling with stress coming to the end of the year?” Her answer was, “ Personally being a student who is struggling with stress during this time of the year, I would recommend to another student who is in the same position to know that it’s okay, and that it’s going to be okay. Sometimes the feeling of stress over exaggerates its source. Just take a breath, slow down, and think about your priorities. Being organized helps a lot with stress, something that helps me is making a checklist. If you got this far through the school year, you can finish it off just as successfully as you got through it.”

Freshman, Bailey Shanken, was asked “What is the biggest thing on your to-do list that is making you feel stressed, and why?” She answered with, “My grades, because I have three F’s” To continue the conversation, I asked “How are you going to get those grades up before finals?” To that, she responded with, “Do my work.” She was very vague with her answers, but she knows what she needs to focus on.

I asked Ayelen Agustin-Rosas, a sophomore, “If you could talk to your freshman self about finals, what would you say?” She replied, “To not stress about it and study a lot and don’t overthink it.” To follow that, I asked “When thinking about life after high school, what is causing  you the most stress?” She replied, “Going into adult life and real life becoming…real” Which is, to many people, incredibly relatable.

Hearing from different students shows that everyone has some type of stress, and everyone deals with it differently. Finals aren’t as scary as they seem, unless you convince yourself otherwise. If you put out that “Finals are scary!” “I’m gonna fail!”, you’re probably going to be more stressed than you need to be going into finals. Try going in with a positive mindset, remind yourself that you have made it this far and that you can do it.