Students turn to exercise, games to beat stress

College students all over the world have one thing in common: stress. No matter where you go, the same types of worries exist.

There are many different reasons a student becomes stressed. There are worries about classes and the work itself, exams which constantly seem to be around the corner, money problems and the necessity to budget, the stress of being away from home for potentially the first time and relationship stress.

Stress in small amounts does not affect us very much physiologically. When the body experiences prolonged stress though, it can have negative health effects if left unchecked, such as depression, obesity, sexual dysfunction and ulcers.

Some students have found healthy ways to deal with this stress in positive ways.

"I love going to the recreation center and climbing on the rock wall. I also like to sit and write music because doing something that I really like seems to help," Samuel Vieira, a music performance major and graduate student at Texas A&M University-Commerce said.

Especially around mid-terms and finals, some students would rather be in a more social setting, while others would prefer to be alone.

"It doesn't matter to me either way really," Cory Doran, also a music performance major and graduate student at A&M-Commerce said. "Sometimes I like to sit and drink coffee with some friends or go for a walk by myself around campus, pop in my IPod, and listen to some music."

The common bond between these students is the ability to remove themselves from the outside world and to create a situation where they can get away from their routine stress and think about something else for a while.

For some students, doing this is as simple as the click of a button.

Video games can be a big stress relief for college students all over. Gaming, as it is known, gives a person the ability to participate in a reality of their choice. They also give the player a sense of achievement, challenge, fantasy and at times allow the release of anger or violent feelings into a world where no real people will be injured.

Depending on the game, they can also give the student a community to belong to via online connection, while allowing them to be alone at the same time.

"Gaming is one of the things that I do [to relieve stress]," said Kenneth Scarberry, a freshman art and painting major at A&M-Commerce. "Like everybody else on in the world, I love to play World Of Warcraft."

While there are a lot of students that enjoy doing things that are healthy for relieving stress, there are still quite a few that participate in illicit and illegal activities in order to get rid of it.

Underage drinking, drinking to excess, taking drugs, and risky behavior are things that students all over the world do on a regular basis to help relieve their stress.