“Stress” and “anxiety” have become buzzwords of sorts, thanks to an increasing awareness of the importance of self-care. Rising inflation rates, pandemics, healthcare and housing crises… it’s easy to see why stress is running rampant. And Camosun students, as I’m sure you’re aware, are not immune to stress.
Students are stressed for a number of reasons, although there are resources available to help them out. But how effective are they, and can they be improved?
Tension on top of tension
Just like other people living in Victoria and surrounding municipalities, students are dealing with region-specific health, financial, and personal issues. But on top of that is the fact that we’re attending college, which takes lots of time and money.
“I would say financial stressors are big for students these days,” says Camosun counselling and student wellness manager Liisa Robinson, who adds that anxiety and relationships are other big reasons students come to Camosun counselling. “I would say that’s true community wide when you look at the city of Victoria.”
These concerns are only part of the problem, though. The effects that they have on everyday life is a stress factor within itself. Even adapting to it causes high amounts of tension, says Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Jessie Niikoi.
“Time is moving so fast for some of us that we don’t even know where to stop,” says Niikoi. “People are always working on the weekend and doing school during the week, or working while doing school, like they work on school on school days and that alone is a lot of stress, because they don’t know when to take a break. That just negatively affects everyone. I’ve been there—if I had not had caught COVID I would’ve not stopped working seven days a week. It negatively impacted me because I missed a week of school, but it also gave me time to refresh myself. I realized it did not have to get to that point before I take a break.”
First-year Dental Hygiene student Melissa Haire says that trying to juggle everything is difficult for her.
“I work four days a week as a server so I feel like balancing, like putting school over work sometimes, is hard because it makes it hard to pay bills,” says Haire. “With midterms and everything it’s been a lot, and balancing my friends, school, and work and everything, I would say it’s been a lot.”
Haire isn’t receiving support from Camosun to manage her stress and doesn’t know what’s out there to ease the tension from school. That difficulty balancing work and school is a problem that first-year Economics student Michael Toora is also managing.
“I’m just coming back to school, so I’ve been working for the past eight years,” says Toora. “Working two jobs, quit one job, working 20 hours now, so a big transition for me coming back to school, especially full time. It’s definitely stressful, especially worrying about money, paying rent, all that kind of stuff. My income’s gone down significantly, so just trying to maintain a good balance… Right now I find that [I’m] just spending a lot of time on school, not a lot of time on friends and family, so it’s a give and take.”
Second-year University Transfer student Kit Caudron-Robinson (who is also on the Nexus Publishing Society board of directors) says that he’s more stressed out in general about whether or not there’s any real point in going to school after coming from the oil fields, like he did, where people already make good money.
“What’s the point in coming out here and struggling for so long to do a bunch of bullshit? And then [there’s] kind of the idea of, or the concept of, not really believing in the institution of university,” says Caudron-Robinson. “Seeing that a lot of universities, seeing that a lot of it is this kind of circle of, like, you need to write an essay but you need to reference other people who reference other people who reference other people. No one’s really saying anything new and we sit here in our ivory tower and talk about the rest of the world and all of the problems they face, but no one really has a solution.”
Help yourself
The average student’s stress levels are worrying enough to require attention. And while there’s an endless array of options that Camosun students can take advantage of, it can be daunting to navigate through.
“We have our [CCSS] website available and that has a mental-health resources page and that has different resources available to students. If you want to have a call just to chat and then talk about how you’re feeling, that is available,” says Niikoi. “The college also has counsellors available to all students, but given the time that everything is very busy most people just [use] online stuff. So we just have a lot of online resources and the [CCSS] website for students to just be able to find the resources that they can talk about the things they’re going through, because, in the end, talking about them is a way of helping yourself. If you’re able to talk about the stuff you’re going through, it puts a weight off the chest because sometimes keeping it in is not always the best. And just being able to access these resources that are free and available to everyone.”
Many of the students I spoke with for this piece weren’t aware of most of the help that’s aimed to support students’ mental health, so students are left to figure out how to help themselves.
“I just go for walks, listen to music a lot, like, constantly listening to music,” says Toora. “Probably the biggest thing I do is just go for drives, not great for the environment, but I love to go drive around the water. Or I’ll go up to Cattle Point. I’ll just sit there for like an hour reading a book, listening to music. I’ll go probably about about four or five times a week.”
Robinson would also recommend this as a mode of destressing. She notes that going outside is extremely important for managing both physical and mental health.
“Getting sunlight on your skin, which can be a bit hard in Victoria in the fall… I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience where you start having a grumpy day or you’re feeling a bit off or a bit low and a 15-minute walk can really shift that,” says Robinson. “Sleep is the other big one of those things that I’m always encouraging students to focus on and remember the way we integrate learning is when we’re asleep. So if you spend all evening studying, if you don’t have a good night’s sleep then it’s much harder for your brain to take short-term memory and turn it into long-term memory. So it’s not actually a very solid study strategy to pull all nighters.”
Putting an intentional study plan in place is a positive, and relatively easy, way that students can tackle their stressors. University Transfer student Aidin Huang found it extremely helpful.
“Keeping on top with schoolwork deadlines, for sure, and making sure that I’m organizing everything so I can get it all in on time and kind of gauging what’s the most important thing to do, what’s going to take the most time,” says Huang. “I personally usually have a bad habit of leaving things to the last minute, but I try to manage that. I handle it pretty well, I’d say.”
Extracurricular activities like clubs can be a great addition to students’ mental-health support networks.
“We have our club days, and we realize that a lot of students just come there to destress and play games and sit and talk with other students, and all of that just gives them a little bit of freedom, just a little bit,” says Niikoi. “I don’t know for the other students but I do feel like most have started using our resources more when it comes to just the clubs and our events. We [recently had] Diwali… which we [invited] not only the Indian students, we [invited] everyone. It’s just one of the many ways that students are able to just destress by just being able to communicate with others and not think about school just for a few hours.”
Talking with others can help lessen the power that life’s pressures have over a student’s mentality. Even thinking through anxious thoughts can be a form of de-escalating uncertainty.
“I’ve had pretty stressful days myself, just work, but tomorrow is a new day,” says Toora. “Things always get better. It’s not like it’s the end of the world, sometimes you just need to take a breath and realize what you’re doing isn’t the most important thing in the world, so don’t over-stress yourself. If it’s an exam, work, whatever, take a minute and take some time to yourself.”
Sometimes further aid is needed, though, because students don’t always find positive ways to get through their struggles. Partying too much, sleeping too little, and pushing assignment deadlines are all typical student habits that often do more harm than good.
“College is where no parents are available, you don’t really have to listen to anyone, some people are from far away,” says Niikoi. “If someone’s not used to drinking but then they come to a place where no one’s going to stop you from drinking, no one’s going to hold your hand and be like, ‘Stop.’ It’s just life in general that hits you hard when you’re out of school and you don’t know how to manage it.”
Is Camosun’s help effective?
Camosun has support systems for students, including counselling and other health centres, and the CCSS has mental-health allocations within its student health plan. But beyond this is the work the student society is dedicating to helping resolve factors that cause stress in the first place.
“Being a part of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, one of the biggest things that we always ask the government is to provide more funding for mental-health resources across the country. So we’re always making advocacy for students concerning mental health, and that’s something on the federal level,” says Niikoi. “And even for being members of the BCFS [British Columbia Federation of Students] we know one of the biggest things students are always stressed about is fees, and being able to advocate for students to make education affordable, and have less tuition to pay.”
In the meantime, some instructors are also trying to help their students endure their college experience more easily.
“One of my teachers does breaks in every lecture to let people sort of reflect on what they’ve been learning, and kind of digest a little easier rather than just going through the whole thing like some of my other profs have been doing,” says Huang. “And I just think make people aware of the outlets they can access to sort of relieve stress or find help if they need it.”
In October, Camosun held a Thrive Week, which included a mental-health first aid training course.
“[A] group of students… came in on their weekend to engage in a training to help recognize when their friends and colleagues are struggling to find help and good support,” says Robinson. “So what I think what’s really wonderful about the Camosun community in particular is it’s very supportive, it’s very compassionate. And so when that’s true, when you do start to struggle it’s a bit of a safety net that maybe one of your friends or colleagues will notice that you’re struggling, and will ask if you’ve reached out for support.”
Camosun seems to be aware that its students are struggling with stress, and is trying to provide a helping hand to students. So why are students still often dealing with their problems independently?
“I personally feel like they have resources available, but there’s not enough out there for students to know about it,” says Niikoi. “Because the first time you hear about mental-health resources is in orientation, and then after that there’s one or two events, but it’s not something that a lot of students get to know because then again it always happens during the time where everyone is busy with school so they’re more focused on trying to pass their exam than to go for a mental-resource meeting… I definitely feel there’s more that can be done, there’s more that they can do to put stuff concerning mental health out there, but it also depends on the student themselves.”
Moving forward
Although self-reliance does build useful skills for students to utilize, students are in a state of stress that puts extenuating pressure on them, so they need help from the college. And the solution to this lack of awareness can be quite simple: Camosun needs to provide students with more information about the systems that are in place to help them with their stress.
“Do they have a program right now in place?” says Toora. “I think people, students, are going to be stressed out about school balance, so maybe promoting it more so more people are aware that there’s opportunities to get help and to try to find solutions.”
Many students I talked to agreed with this; Niikoi says that students need to use their voices to generate change.
“I do feel that students need to bring it up because, in the end, students are the one being affected, so students need to speak up concerning things like this,” says Niikoi. “We just need students to speak up, because even though the college knows about it, they don’t know enough about it, because no one’s saying anything.”