NO Stress SEM

New. Exciting. Fun. These are just a few words that help to describe the rush of the beginning of the school year. Another word, however, that almost always comes up is “stress.” This stress occurs from a variety of different situations from the new teachers to get used to, new friends to get to know, and the workload that we are not accustomed to right after a summer vacation with plenty of time to relax. Sometimes just the stress of trying to fit in and being well-rounded while maintaining a life outside of school makes it hard to catch a breath!

The stress of the average teenager seems to skyrocket in the early months of school, simply because everything happens all at once. You may feel as if you are overworked to your breaking point and no one around you understands. To start to put your mind at ease, you should know you are not alone and being a student at SEM gives you access to a multitude of resources designed to you to help with the stress that seems to come around like clockwork every September.

Here are the top 5 stress relievers SEM can help with:

Agenda: Every student at SEM receives a SEM planner. This planner lists each of your days in schedule format which gives you space to write in all your classes and homework for the week period by period. Your planner even includes the all high-school calendar and bell schedule, to help you better manage your time. My biggest advice to all students is to USE THIS RESOURCE. Writing down all of your homework as a visual guide to your week can help keep you in check and help you balance out not only your work, but also your time for extracurricular activities and projects. This way, you won’t have to search a mess of sticky notes or loose-leaf pages for all of your individual assignments and appointment times, you can just see them all in one handy place. Let your planner be your BEST new accessory.

“My planner is my life.” – Bessie Shiroki

Help: We are all lucky enough to attend a school that allows time in the day for students to meet with teachers for help in a class. USE THIS TIME. Asking questions in the early months of school will help you in the long run. Even if you aren’t sure if your question sounds silly, just stop by to see if that teacher can meet with you during help to clear the air. This can help you establish a relationship with the teacher, in the future, when you do have pending questions on notes or an assignment, you feel 100% comfortable speaking with that teacher. The teachers at SEM are here to help you USE THEM. Hint, hint, the teachers notice the kids that come to see them during help, and take note of those putting in that little bit of extra effort.

“I really appreciate that SEM gives us free periods instead of mandatory study halls. Those free periods allow me to learn time management skills which prevents me from future stress. It also gives me time to unwind.” – Claire Conrad

Lunch Time- Club Time – Meeting Time: Another unique aspect of SEM that we should all take advantage of is our lunch period. SEM allows the whole school to break at the same time for lunch. This way no one is in class and teachers are free. This time is the perfect opportunity to meet with anyone you need to, and to have club meetings. This also takes away the stress and conflicts about coming early to school or staying late. Why stress out and be at school longer than needed just for a club? No need, they meet during lunch! Also lunchtime can be used to relax. Unless you have a meeting the biggest tip I can pass on to my fellow SEM sisters is that we all need breaks in our day to “goof off” and not be wrapped up in all the worries that naturally come with school. Take this 50 minutes every day to breathe. You’ll thank yourself later.

“What helps me relieve stress is taking a five minute break during help and walking around in circles while I just take a breath.” – Lara Sherris

Frees: SEM is not only a wonderful place, but a very flexible place. With our schedules we are able to have free periods throughout the day. A majority of students are fortunate enough to have at least one free period a day and many times students are lucky enough to have more. USE THESE. 40 minutes is plenty of time to catch up on work, start homework (or even finish), and study. Imagine using all of your free time to finish up work and having tons of free time when you get home from school to SLEEP. Now I know it is not always easy to sit down and motivate yourself to do your work when your free periods happen to line up with those of your friends, but create a nice balance. If you are swamped with work, use your time wisely, and if the work load for that week or day is light then you can use your time as you want. Just be smart.

“My sports and being able to listen to music during my free periods help me relieve stress.” - Madison Frank

Community: At SEM we have a pretty small community compared to other high schools in the area. This is another key asset to you. I know it may sounds extremely cheesy but one of the best ways I have found to de-stress at school is to talk to my SEM sisters or an adult at SEM. Sometimes simply talking about why you are stressed and about what stresses you out can be calming and bring you peace of mind. Everyone at SEM has a good habit of making themselves available to each individual. Not only are your friends always there for you, but your advisor at SEM can be similar to your grown up go-to girl. They are there to help YOU and guide you through anything you may need, and if you need to let off steam these are trained professionals, THEY WANT TO HELP.

“Having a classmate reassure me that I’ll do well on something I am stressing over helps me relax.” – Anna Fretz

These 5 quick tips are NOT the end all be all and you may have your own ways that you de-stress yourself. Keep doing what helps you, but consider the above tips. Remember to breathe and nothing is as bad as it may seem. Good luck, and enjoy the year!

Reflection: In Media Class one of our first assignments was to write an article for the SEM school newspaper. This assignment was our first crack at journalism for the year, and was there to show off what we knew about writing articles and to allow Mrs. Pritchard to show us what we still needed to learn. I decided to write about ways to calm down the stress at school, since it was the beginning of the year. After picking some major points to express in the article I collected a couple of quotes from my fellow classmates about how they avoid stress. This helped my article, in my opinion, to relate more to the reader. When writing an article I learned that your point has to be straight forward, and you do not want to add too much fluff. You want to tell a good story and in my case provide good and reasonable examples of how to avoid stress. I enjoyed this assignment, however know I could use some improvement in my article writing skills, as I am hoping to be writing many articles for papers, or magazines, or blogs in the future.