Expert answer:Is it possible to improve our ability to remember
Solved by verified expert:Is it possible to improve our ability to remember what we read? Answer each of the following in your own words. 75-80 word each question1.Read Ch. 5(attached) and pay special attention to the section regarding using proven strategies to memorize new material. What strategies did you learn about within this segment? How might they be similar or different from the ones you currently use?2.Read Ch.10(attached) and then by thinking of ways to cope with stress effectively. We are not always able to change the stressors we face, but we do have control over the methods we use to cope effectively with them. What strategies have you included in your plan? Do you think they will help with physical tension/health or with remaining focused on positive thoughts to help you remain focused?
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CHAPTER 10
Juggling: Stress, Money, Family, and Work
Learning Outcomes
By the time you finish this chapter you will be able to
LO
Define stress and explain how to control it.
LO
Explain what is involved with keeping fit and healthy.
LO
Analyze the reasons for keeping to a budget and explain how to prepare and stick
to one.
10.1
10.2
10.3
It had been a long day for Diana Michaels—and now, lying in bed, she couldn’t fall asleep.
The many stresses and worries of her day kept repeating in her mind. The babysitter she relied on
to watch her children in the afternoon when she went to nursing classes had told her she wanted a
raise. Diana, a single mother, wasn’t sure she could afford to pay more and still pay all the other
bills: utilities, rent, car insurance, tuition, and the rest. Her paycheck from her job as an
administrative assistant at a hospital was already stretched thin. And given that she worked full
time and was going to college, she didn’t think she could find time to take on a new job or even
additional shifts.
Diana reassured herself that she could figure out a way to save a little more money. She told
herself that at the moment what she really needed was sleep. She had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to
exercise, then get her children to school, then go to work, then go to class. But all she could do
was toss and turn, stressing about the many challenges she had to face in the morning.
Looking
Ahead
Do you ever feel like Diana? Do you ever stay awake wondering how you’ll meet the demands of
family, bills, college, and work? Then you’re no stranger to stress. It’s something that all of us
experience from time to time, but that college can often exacerbate. It isn’t easy to be a student
on top of being a parent, a spouse, an employee, and so forth. Almost one-third of first-year
college students report feeling frequently overwhelmed with all they need to do.1
Coping with stress is one of the challenges that college students face. The many demands on
your time can make you feel that you’ll never finish what needs to get done. This pressure
produces wear and tear on your body and mind, and it’s easy to fall prey to ill health as a result.
However, stress and poor health are not inevitable outcomes. In fact, by following simple
guidelines and deciding to make health a conscious priority, you can maintain good physical and
mental health. It’s not easy to balance the many responsibilities of study and work and family,
but it is possible.
Perhaps the greatest source of stress for college students, if not for most people in general, is
money. Even under the best of circumstances, our finances present us with many challenges. But
money stress is not inevitable either. This chapter will show you how to manage your money. It
begins by discussing the process of preparing a budget and identifying your financial goals—the
basis for money management. The chapter goes on to examine ways you can keep track of your
spending and estimate your financial needs and resources, and discusses ways to control your
spending habits and save money.
LO 10.1 Living with Stress
Stressed out? Tests, papers, job demands, family problems, volunteer activities…. It’s no surprise
that these can produce stress. But it may be a surprise to know that so can graduating from
college, starting your dream job, falling in love, getting married, and even winning the lottery.
Stress
The physical and emotional response to events that threaten or challenge us.
Virtually anything —good or bad—is capable of producing stress if it presents us with a
challenge. Stressis the physical and emotional response we have to events that threaten or
challenge us. It is rooted in the primitive “fight or flight” response wired into all animals—
human and nonhuman. You see it in cats, for instance, when confronted by a dog or other threat:
Their backs go up, their fur stands on end, their eyes widen, and, ultimately, they either take off
or attack. The challenge stimulating this revved-up response is called a stressor. For humans,
stressors can range from a first date to losing our wallet to experiencing a tornado or hurricane.
Because our everyday lives are filled with events that can be interpreted as threatening or
challenging, stress is commonplace in most people’s lives. There are three main types of
stressors:
1. Cataclysmic events are events that occur suddenly and affect many people
simultaneously. Tornadoes, hurricanes, and plane crashes are examples of cataclysmic
events.
2. Personal stressors are major life events that produce a negative physical and
psychological reaction. Failing a course, losing a job, and ending a relationship are all
examples of personal stressors. Sometimes positive events—such as getting married or
starting a new job—can act as personal stressors. Although the short-term impact of a
personal stressor can be difficult, the long-term consequences may decline as people
learn to adapt to the situation.
3. Daily hassles are the minor irritants of life that, singly, produce relatively little stress.
Waiting in a traffic jam, receiving a bill riddled with mistakes, and being interrupted by
noises of major construction while trying to study are examples of such minor irritants.
However, daily hassles add up, and cumulatively, they can produce even more stress than
a single larger-scale event. (Figure 10.1 on page 000 indicates the most common daily
hassles in people’s lives.2)
What Is Happening When We Are Stressed?
Stress does more than make us feel anxious, upset, and fearful. Beneath those responses, we are
experiencing many different physical reactions, each placing a high demand on our body’s
resources. Our hearts beat faster, our breathing becomes more rapid and shallow, and we produce
more sweat. Our internal organs churn out a variety of hormones. In the long run, these physical
responses wear down our immune system, our body’s defense against disease. We become more
susceptible to a variety of diseases, ranging from the common cold and headaches to strokes and
heart disease. In fact, surveys have found that the greater the number of stressful events a person
experiences over the course of a year, the more likely it is that he or she will have a major illness
(see Try It 1 on pages 242 and 243, “Assess Your Susceptibility to Stress-Related Illness”).
figure 10.1
Daily Hassles
Handling Stress
Stress is an inevitable part of life. In fact, a life with no stress at all would be so boring, so
uneventful, that you’d quickly miss the stress that had been removed.
Coping
The effort to control, reduce, or learn to tolerate the threats that lead to stress.
That doesn’t mean, though, that we have to sit back and accept stress when it does arise. Coping
is the effort to control, reduce, or tolerate the threats that lead to stress. There are many tactics
you can employ to cope with the stress in your life, regardless of its cause or intensity.
Being in good physical condition is one excellent way to prepare for future stress. Stress takes its
toll on your body, so it makes sense that the stronger and fitter you are, the less negative impact
stress will have on you. For example, a regular exercise program reduces heart rate, respiration
rate, and blood pressure at times when the body is at rest—making us better able to withstand the
negative consequences of stress.
If you drink a lot of coffee or soda, a change in your diet may be enough to bring about a
reduction in stress. Coffee, soda, chocolate, and a surprising number of other foods contain
caffeine, which can make you feel jittery and anxious even without stress; add a stressor, and the
reaction can be very intense and unpleasant.
Eating right can alleviate another problem: obesity. Being overweight can bring on stress for
several reasons. For one thing, the extra pounds drag down the functioning of the body. This can
lead to fatigue and a reduced ability to bounce back when we encounter challenges to our wellbeing. In addition, feeling heavy in a society that acclaims the virtues of slimness can be stressful
in and of itself.
Of course, stress is not just a question of diet and exercise. To cope with stress, you need to
understand what causes it. In some cases, it’s obvious—a series of bad test grades in a course, a
family problem that keeps getting worse, a job supervisor who seems to delight in making things
difficult. In other cases, however, the causes of stress may be more subtle. Perhaps your
relationship with your wife or husband is rocky, and you have a nagging feeling that something
is wrong.
Whatever the source of stress, you need to pinpoint it. To organize your assault on stress then,
take a piece of paper and list the major circumstances that are causing you stress. Just listing
them will help put you in control, and you’ll be better able to figure out strategies for coping with
them.
Developing Effective Coping Strategies
A wide variety of tactics can help you deal with stress once you’ve identified its sources. In
addition to lifestyle changes outlined above, among the most effective approaches to coping are
these:
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Take charge of the situation. Stress is most apt to arise when we are faced with
situations over which we have little or no control. If you take charge of the situation,
you’ll reduce the experience of stress. For example, if several work assignments are given
to you all on the same day, you might try recruiting a coworker to help lighten your load.
Assess Your Susceptibility to Stress-Related Illness
Are you susceptible to a stress-related illness? The more stress in your life, the more likely it is
that you will experience a major illness.
To determine the stress in your life, take the stressor value given beside each event you have
experienced and multiply it by the number of occurrences over the past year (up to a maximum
of four), and then add up these scores.3
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87 Experienced the death of a spouse
77 Got married
77 Experienced the death of a close family member
76 Got divorced
74 Experienced a marital separation
68 Experienced the death of a close friend
68 Experienced pregnancy or fathered a pregnancy
65 Had a major personal injury or illness
62 Were fired from work
60 Ended a marital engagement or a steady relationship
58 Had sexual difficulties
58 Experienced a marital reconciliation
57 Had a major change in self-concept or self-awareness
56 Experienced a major change in the health or behavior of a family member
54 Became engaged to be married
53 Had a major change in financial status
52 Took on a mortgage or loan of more than $10,000
52 Had a major change in use of drugs
50 Had a major conflict or change in values
50 Had a major change in the number of arguments with your spouse
50 Gained a new family member
50 Entered college
50 Changed to a new school
50 Changed to a different line of work
49 Had a major change in amount of independence and responsibility
47 Had a major change in responsibilities at work
46 Experienced a major change in use of alcohol
45 Revised personal habits
44 Had trouble with school administration
43 Held a job while attending school
43 Had a major change in social activities
42 Had trouble with in-laws
42 Had a major change in working hours or conditions
42 Changed residence or living conditions
41 Had your spouse begin or cease work outside the home
41 Changed your choice of major field of study
41 Changed dating habits
40 Had an outstanding personal achievement
38 Had trouble with your boss
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38 Had a major change in amount of participation in school activities
37 Had a major change in type and/or amount of recreation
36 Had a major change in religious activities
34 Had a major change of sleeping habits
33 Took a trip or vacation
30 Had a major change in eating habits
26 Had a major change in the number of family get-togethers
22 Were found guilty of minor violations of the law
Scoring: If your total score is above 1,435, you are in a high-stress category and therefore more
at risk for experiencing a stress-related illness.
But keep in mind the limitations of this questionnaire. There may be factors in your life that
produce high stress that are not listed. In addition, a high score does not mean that you are sure
to get sick. Many other factors determine ill health, and high stress is only one cause. Other
positive factors in your life, such as getting enough sleep and exercise, may prevent illness.
Still, having an unusually high amount of stress in your life is a cause for concern. If you do
score high, you may want to take steps to reduce it.
To Try It online, go to www.mhhe.com/power.
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Don’t waste energy trying to change the unchangeable. There are some situations that
you simply can’t control. You can’t change the fact that you have come down with a case
of the flu, and you can’t change your performance on a test you took last week. Don’t hit
your head against a brick wall and try to modify things that can’t be changed. Use your
energy to improve the situation, not to rewrite history.
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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Look for the silver lining. Stress arises when we perceive a situation as threatening. If
we can change how we perceive that situation, we can change our reactions to it. For
instance, if your information technology instructor requires you to create a difficult
computer program in a very short time, the saving grace is that you may be able to use
the skill to your advantage in getting a high-paying job down the road. (You can practice
finding the silver lining in Try It 2 on page 244.)
Social support
Assistance and comfort supplied by others in times of stress.
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Talk to friends and family. Social support, or assistance and comfort supplied by
others, can help us through stressful periods. Turning to our friends and family and
simply talking about the stress we’re under can help us tolerate it more effectively. Even
anonymous telephone hotlines can provide us with social support. (The U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services maintains a master toll-free number that can provide
telephone numbers and addresses of many national helplines and support groups. You
can reach it by calling 1–800–336–4797.)
Look for the Silver Lining
Consider the following list of potentially stressful situations. Try to find something positive—a
silver lining—in each of them. The first two are completed to get you started.
WORKING IN A GROUP
After you have considered each of these situations individually, discuss each of them in a group.
What similarities and differences in others’ responses did you find? Evaluate the different
responses, and consider whether—and why—some ways of reframing the situations were better
than others.
To Try It online, go to www.mhhe.com/power.
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Relax. Because stress produces constant wear and tear on the body, it seems possible that
practices that lead to the relaxation of the body might lead to a reduction in stress. And
that’s just what happens. Using any one of several techniques for producing physical
relaxation can prevent stress. Among the best relaxation techniques is meditation.
Though often associated with its roots in the ancient Eastern religion of Zen Buddhism,
meditation, a technique for refocusing attention and producing bodily relaxation, is
practiced in some form by members of virtually every major religion. Meditation reduces
blood pressure, slows respiration, and in general reduces bodily tension. You can learn
about practicing meditation online, at the library, or at a meditation center in your area.
Remember that wimping out doesn’t work—so keep your commitments. Suppose
you’ve promised a friend that you’ll help him move, and you’ve promised yourself that
you’ll spend more time with your children. You’ve also started work building a porch on
the front of your house. Now you are facing all the demands connected to these
commitments and feeling stressed.
You may be tempted to cope with the feeling by breaking some or all of your
commitments, thinking, “I just need to sit at home and relax in front of the television!”
This is not coping. It is escaping, and it doesn’t reduce stress. Ducking out of
commitments, whether to yourself or to others, will make you feel guilty and anxious and
will be another source of stress—one without the satisfaction of having accomplished
what you set out to do. Find ways to keep your promises.
From the perspective of …
A STUDENT The educational process can be stressful. When you consider your future career
path, what are the areas of stress you may need to address?
Placing Stress in Perspective
It’s easy to think of stress as an enemy. In fact, most approaches to coping are geared to
overcoming the negative consequences of stress. But consider the following two principles,
which in the end may help you more than any others in dealing with stress:
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Don’t sweat the small stuff … and it’s all small stuff. Stress expert Richard Carlson4
emphasizes the importance of putting the circumstances we encounter into the proper
perspective. He argues that we frequently let ourselves get upset about situations that are
actually minor.
So what if someone cuts us off in traffic, or does less than his or her share on a group
project, or unfairly criticizes us? It’s hardly the end of the world. If an unpleasant event
has no long-term consequences, it’s often best to let it go. One of the best ways to reduce
stress, consequently, is to maintain an appropriate perspective on the events of your life.
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Make peace with stress. Think of what it would be like to have no stress—none at all—
in your life. Would you really be happier, better adjusted, and more successful? The
answer is “probably not.” A life that presented no challenges would probably be, in a
word, boring. So think about stress as an exciting, though admittedly sometimes difficult,
friend. Welcome it, at least in moderation, because its presence indicates that your life is
stimulating, challenging, and exciting—and who would want it any other way?
LO 10.2 Keeping Well
Eat right. Exercise. Get plenty of sleep.
Pretty simple, isn’t it? We learn the fundamentals of fitness and health in the first years of
elementary school.
Yet for millions of us, wellness is an elusive goal. We eat on the fly, stopping for a bite at the
drive-in window of a fast-food restaurant. Most of us don’t exercise enough, either because we
feel we don’t have enough time or because it’s not much fun for us. And as for sleep, we’re a
nation in which getting by with as little sleep as possible is seen as a badge of honor.
“The first wealth is health.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, author and poet
For many college students, the bad habits are only made worse by the need to manage so many
different sets of responsibilities. It is hard to concentrate on keeping well when you also need to
keep your children cared for, your boss happy, your schoolwork complete, your household
managed. Personal health can easily get lost in the shuffle of all these competing demands. At
the end of the day, too many students feel as if they’ve run themselves ragged just trying to do
the minimum to meet their many obligations.
Yet your health is too important to just ignore. There are strategies you can use to balance your
commitments, and you can begin to eat more properly, exercise effectively, and sleep better.
Approaches to accomplishing these goals include the following:
Juggling Your Responsibilities
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Identify your priorities. Taking your child to the dentist or studying for a final exam are
examples of tasks that absolutely have to be accomplished. Updating your blog or
cleaning out your garage are …
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