Opinion Piece — How University Students Educate Themselves and the Values of Education Behind Their Behaviour and Stress

Mental health issues like anxiety or depression can affect student’s schoolwork, and can be identified with screenings by the MSU Counseling Center. The Center will be hosting free screening at different locations around campus on Thursday. Lauren Wood/The State News

I have to confess: stress poses huge impacts on students’ emotion and lives. Pressure has become a significant object in our lives. It’s more important that university students should learn and absorb the essential knowledge and skills from the education as to reduce their stress and enhance their ability. It will cause negative consequence in students’ lives such as lower their learning ability and affect their mental health if they are not handling well in this aspect. To themselves, students ought to look on the bright side and feel positive in educating their skills and enhance their knowledge. To the society, it guides them to contribute positively to the development of their cities from different aspects and enhance the social responsibility of students while they apply their future careers which apt their dream and goals.

I’d choose focusing on the education and motivation of the studying of university students. Collecting primary, secondary sources and several findings for instance news and academic resources to highlight about the opinion and behaviour of students for my opinion piece are the keys to create the best discussion and develop my opinion piece.

First and foremost, my groupmates and I have finished the questionnaire about the relationship between stress and future career decisions among university students for the primary resource. In order to gain an in-depth understanding of university students’ opinions on studying and future career choices, I try to analyse the core factors which influence their mental health and explore the possible values behind their behaviour through the questionnaire.

What kinds of issue do the students facing? How are student handling their study? Here’s one of my question. We aim at understanding the factors of stress behind university students, such as social pressure and the worries about the employment rates. In the questionnaire, there’re 62.9% of the students showed worries about the income of their future jobs who aimed at improving their life quality. We can see that financial problem is the key reason of pressure that poses large impacts on their mental health and influences the behaviour of students. How difficult do students deal with workload? Students are struggle and trying to find solutions of reducing their stress and overcome with workload for instance, meditation. Mindfulness meditation switches the focus on what is happening right now, rather than concerning about the future. Sharing with peers and relaxation are the other solutions that students may adopt to reduce their pressure and deal with workload. Taking me as an example, I would create a timetable to manage plenty of the assignments and even share with my family members to reduce my stress. Apart from that, I feel blue that I have the same worries with the students. The adequate or inadequate income for maintaining our livelihood is the biggest worry of making students’ future career choices and causing our stress. Education contains the value of facilitating students to develop an independent way of thinking and living.

Does the pressure impact on them from my classmates? From my interview of focus group with my classmates, I asked a question about the difficult choice making between dream job with low salary and normal job with high salary if students are unable to own a house for a long time in high living cost city. One of the students, Fish, mentioned that he would like to gain a huge reserve first and use the large amount of money to chase his own dream afterwards. I agree with the students that money is important in our life since they can continue their dream as a hobby. Most of the students prefer to gain the money first as to achieve their goals soon.

The education of ‘Caring universities’ program can facilitate students’ learning ability and correct their behaviour. Plenty of the universities have made a start in developing mental health technology at and for their institution, for instance the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The program provides free web-based mental health interventions for university students in order to help them to find the values of education and their future goals. Full development of students’ personality in physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects is one of the key values of education too.

What’s more, an expert Ben Locke mentioned that students lack pressure or are overly stressed can affect their studying in university life. Ben Locke, PhD, a college mental health expert and the executive director of the Center for College Mental Health at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania. The information of social pressure and facts of society from digital devices overwhelms us and contributes to anxiety, he said. Well said, I agree with that students should stop absorbing the information of social pressure for a while and take a meditation of their stressful mind as I mention before. Education contains core values of increasing students’ inquisitiveness, whole development, positive attitudes to think and judge themselves.

From my questionnaire and focus group interview, the students discussed about the values of education and motivation of their studying. There’re several values such as adventure, challenge, creativity, diversity, fun, influencing others, time freedom and high income. 13 of the students chose “fun” and 12 of the students selected “time freedom” with the ranking of 5. It shows that students aware of the joy and flexible of time of their future career. Besides that, one of the students Zoe said that she would apply some further education program to get some certification to strengthening her skills. Thus, she could add more detail in her CV. It would surely enhance the skills of students and educating them to move into the future. Yin agreed with Zoe’s point that continuing to learn is important for their lives since it may improve their livelihood and motivate the attitudes towards finding suitable jobs. Yin would choose to apply some programs to improve his knowledge for instance English courses. There’s no doubt that students should look on the bright side and find the values of education as to enhance their attitudes towards future and encourage themselves to study more knowledge with applying English courses or part-time master degree.

Last but not least, learning and absorbing the essential knowledge and find the values of the education are the keys for students to reduce their stress and enhance their studying ability. Students should explore the values and targets of their future which will guide them to contribute positively to the development of the cities while the students have their future jobs which apt their dream and goals. Look on the bright side and I believe you will discover more on your own road!

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