Coping with stress
In todays world, we are dealing with so many multiple tasks per day that it's hard to know what exactly the stress is. When people add school to the equation I think it can be used as an escape from their other realities. As instructors this can be our opportunity to make them fall in love so to speak with school and put that fire in them so retention won't be an issue.
Hopefully, education is part of the solution - not part of the problem.
Loren Kroh
stress is so very hard to deal with and so hard to cope with as insturctors we need to offer our shoulders to help get the students mindset back on their education
I have been an adjunct instructor for nearly five years now and every term that I have taught I have had students tell me when they start to feel stress in their lives or their assignments start to diminish by the way side they continually tell me, "Mr. Turner I have so much going on in my life right now." I totally understand that and I am by no means saying that I have the perfect life as I have had and still have many obstacles in my life as we all do however I try to impress upon my students the pressures I have in my life or others lives yet we still have accomplished great things in our lives that have landed us where are today. It appears that these are excuses students give when their class work suffers. Sometimes it is difficult to tell if the students are really living these woes of life or giving you these stories as excuses as to why they are not submitting their work on time or starting to miss classes regularly. I have been successful in some instances with students who divulge the stressors they are experiencing in their personal lives by sharing my experiences and how I still achieved the accomplishments I have that ultimately resulted in me in qualifying as their instructor. Many students have taking these heart to heart conversations and it has reached their figurative heart that they stayed in school and successfully graduated. Others may drop but even in those instances I always try to keep in touch with them and encourage them that this is only a minor set back and eventually they will resume their studies and achieve their goals!
