College Student Stress: Finances, Relationships, and Academics

This essay delves into the primary causes of stress among college students, focusing on the interconnected factors of financial strain, academic pressure, and relationship difficulties. It highlights how financial instability, often stemming from student loans and the need to work while studying, can lead to stress, impacting academic performance and mental health. The essay further examines the significant stress associated with academic demands, including heavy workloads, tests, and the pressure to achieve high grades, which can contribute to mental health issues. Additionally, it explores the role of relationships, both romantic and social, in causing stress, citing issues such as relationship conflicts and the challenges of balancing personal relationships with academic responsibilities. The essay emphasizes the need for mentorship and support to help students navigate these stressors and succeed in their studies. The essay is well-researched and cites multiple sources to support its arguments.

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CAUSES OF STRESS AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS DUE TO FINANCES,
RELATIONSHIPS, AND ACADEMIC DEMANDS.
Research has currently revealed that many individuals who are victims of stress are young adults,
especially college students. The most identified factors that contribute to stressful condition
among college student is finances, relationships, as well as academic demands. Thus, it calls for
one to understand what is stress to get into a step of arguing what can cause stress and the weight
of each factor that causes stress. However, stress does not only occur in college students only but
also to all people regardless of the age when subjected to situations that are not bearable. Stress
denotes a feeling of physical or emotional tension that can originate from any thought or event
and makes one feel nervous, frustrated, or angry. Stress can either be positive or negative,
depending on the circumstances one is experiencing and body reaction towards that state. The
essay focuses on the argument that finances, relationships, and academic demands put so many
college students in stress.
Financial stress
Studies expose that huge financial affliction among college students results in dropping out of
college to look for paid work and also reduces student course work. Students under financial
difficulties reduce credit hour because they get engaged in activities the will enable them to
produce money alongside their studies. It is not that easy as it seems for a studying student to
survive in college without finance since even the basic needs like feeding itself apart from school
fees demand a lot. The current survey illustrates that almost half of several areas sample of the
moderate and low-income students in Wisconsin college students revealed signals of food
insecurity (Baker, Amanda and Catherine Montalto, 115-120). Food insecurity reflected when a
student skips meals to minimize the costs or reducing the size as well as being unable to meet the

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expense of a balanced diet. Financial stress has a destructive influence on the educational
performance of college students. Financial problems make many college students fail to
complete their studies and end up dropping out due to debts. The struggles faced by college
students do affect not only academic performance but also have great mental health (Montalto,
Catherine, et al. .3-21) The increase in financial stress mostly comes coupled with depression
and anxiety, which is extrapolative of less participation in college and focusing on looking for
academic support. Majority of college students who look for financial counseling from the
institution employed counselors mostly show a maximum level of financial stress as the key
reason for soughing the service. This explains clearly that lack of enough finances for college
students contributes to the development of stress (Nasirudeen and Koh, 363-373).
Academic demand stress
It is a common perspective that education is very vital in every person's life, and thus, an effort to
succeed in it is a must. Students often get academic stress as a result of heavy workloads and
programs such as tests and assignment completion. Academic stress entails mental distress
concerning expected academic challenges or underperformance as well as fear of the feasibility
of educational failure (Wärulf, Rebecka, 312-317). College students get academic stress as they
scuffle to attain academic standards like overall grades and fear concerning time management.
The mental health of students mostly based on academic stress and its influence has been a
serious issue to the educators and policymakers as a result of increased cases of suicides among
students globally.
College student knows that today's world is very competitive and thus strive to achieve the best
results to stand the competition even when they join the job market. Academic stress also
originates from parents as well as guardians' pressure for the student to attain the best scores.

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Most of the professors also place a lot of academic pressure to the student requiring them to
complete readings, assignment and at the same time prepare for the final examination (Price, and
Alyssa, 1-15) The students must do all this and not just doing but also meet the set pass mark for
every course. Some of the courses are very difficult, and students need to study in between the
lines to grasp the content. Additionally, the college student is required to write journals, team
papers, research papers, and be involved in all class activities. Research reports that academic
stress is more pronounced to a medical student from various parts of the world, which increases
the risk of mental disorders, psychological distress, and even a decrease in life satisfaction. The
extreme academic stress makes the student encounter challenges in solving interpersonal clashes,
loss of objectivity, self-meditation, increased incidence of errors, and reduced attentiveness.
Academic stress makes also makes students have impaired judgment and get addicted to drug
and substance abuse like alcohol drinking and cigarette smoking (Kim, Hyoung Soo, 9.2).
Relationships stress
It is the nature of every human being to relate and socialize with one another in different
contexts. However, in this context, most of the relationships among college students that lead to
stress are the romantic relationship. The student college level is so active and indulges in
romantic relationships without giving a thought to this. Bearing in mind that studies also require
a lot of time and attention for one to pass, most students tend to do the reciprocal. They allocate
much time, especially in the first year of their study, when they are still new to the environment.
Managing romantic relation, coupled with academic pressure and financial struggles, becomes
huge stress to the student (Sung, Yoonhe, Nam, and Hwang, 154).
Other students encounter fake romantic love, which ends up frustrating them and leads to stress
within the cause of the study. Sadly, several suicidal cases among college students due to the

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crisis in romantic love are the talk of the day in every higher institution (Stover, Sidney, et al.,
15-18). Similarly, the student who already stressed on romantic relationship tends to have
reduced motivation towards classwork; thus, they do not enjoy their studies. Carelessness in
relationships among students has led some to get sexually transmitted diseases, which negatively
interferes with their healthy study. Most of the male students in the final year in college wait for
the newly joining female students to cheat them in romantic relationships since they are naïve.
Additional consequences of relationships that add stress to the student are when pregnancy
results are positive and the partner is not willing to take care of the results or not able (Roaming
and Howard, 832-843). Thus, the student may be forced to differ in the studies if not able to
handle academic work and nursing the infants while studying. This causes a lot of stress and
delays to the college student who finds themselves in that state. Finally, financial stress,
academic stress, and relationship stress are among the top causes of stress to college student need
mentorship to help them overcome this and complete studies on time.

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Work cited
Baker, Amanda R., and Catherine P. Montalto. "Student loan debt and financial stress:
Implications for academic performance." Journal of College Student Development 60.1
(2019): 115-120.
Kim, Hyoung Soo. "The Influence of Academic Emotional Burnout on Academic Adjustment
among College Students: The mediating Effect of a Grateful Disposition." Journal of
Asia Pacific Counseling 9.2 (2019).
Montalto, Catherine P., et al. "College student financial wellness: Student loans and
beyond." Journal of Family and Economic Issues 40.1 (2019): 3-21.
Nasirudeen, A. M. A., and Koh Wat Neo Josephine. "Acculturative stress among Asian
international students in Singapore." Journal of International Students, 2014 Vol. 4
(1) 4.4 (2019): 363-373.
Price, Eric W., and Alyssa M. Swan. "Connecting, Coping, and Creating: An Expressive Arts
Group for First Year College Students." Journal of Creativity in Mental Health (2019): 1-
15.
Roming, Sinjin, and Krista Howard. "Coping with stress in college: an examination of
spirituality, social support, and quality of life." Mental Health, Religion & Culture 22.8
(2019): 832-843.
Stover, Sidney, et al. "Relationship Stress: Social Media Edition." (2019).

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Sung, Yoonhe, Tae-Hyun Nam, and Mae Hyang Hwang. "Attachment style, stressful events, and
Internet gaming addiction in Korean university students." Personality and Individual
Differences 154 (2020): 109724.
Wärulf, Rebecka. ""The Worry Cloud": A design with a tangible and embodied approach to
reduce stress among university students." (2019).