Thriving on Stress

I have come to realize that I am a person who thrives on stress.  I think I have known this for a while but I really do believe that graduate school has shown me just how well I do when I am under stress or pressure of some sort.  This is not a call for people to become stress-a-holics or anything, but it is just a realization I have made in terms of how I deal with stress.

If there is one thing about grad school that is a constant it is stress.  I don’t think there has been a point in my life since I started grad school where I didn’t have something to do or something on my mind that was a stressor in my life.  The important thing is that you have some constructive way of dealing with it.  Most of my friends all have their way of dealing with it and the ones who have found some constructive way of dealing with it are doing pretty well.  However, those who seem to be overwhelmed by the stress in their life seem to be floundering around more and are less driven in terms of the direction they are going. 

For me, I use my stress as motivation for getting things done I suppose.  When I am not stressed, which is pretty much never, I feel like I am not productive and have a harder time getting things done.  However, as stress begins to pile up I kind of welcome it because it forces me to prioritize and evaluate my situation.  It forces me to trim out things in my life that aren’t going to get something done for me, both professionally and personally.  Again, I think the stress also forces me to schedule time to unwind and do things I want to do with my time as well as organizing the aspects of my life that require me to meet deadlines and such. 

I think it is safe to say that I might be an exception to some rule about how to deal with stress but the really important thing to note here is that you must have some constructive way to deal with stress.  If that can’t be found it seems that grad school gets harder than it already is and becomes overwhelming and you are left behind.  So learning to deal with those things that stress you out in life, both in terms of handling it when it arises but also learning how to get away from it and unwind, are key features in terms of what you learn in grad school that is not on some course syllabus or in some textbook.  Though this may be true, it is an exceptionally valuable skill to learn so that as stress mounts in your life, you can deal with it accordingly and not let it stop you.