It’s revision time and final-year undergraduate students are learning not just how to remember large amounts of information, but also to cope with the increased levels of stress and anxiety that this causes. A study of 2,000 final-year university students by productivity website Stop Procrastinating discovered that 64 percent of students are experiencing so much stress that they fear it will undermine their ability to revise and ultimately affect their grades.
This could have some serious consequences if true. As the study shows, the students are stressed and anxious because of the significance of their exams. For instance, 66 percent of students believe their stress levels are greater than in the past because the world is a far more competitive place. There are more students at university and fewer jobs for young people. Thirty-four percent of students were so worried they had sought professional help, from either their GP or a counsellor.
The study found a major cause of stress was procrastinating. More than 70 percent of students believed they procrastinated too much over revising, blaming the modern day for creating too many distractions, such as social media and omnipresent internet access. Forty-five percent said they wasted time on the internet or social media instead of revising.
More positively, the study also surveyed the strategies that students find most effective. From using an internet blocker when revising to taking more exercise or breaking down revision into bite-sized chunks, students are, it seems, finding ways to cope.
