After having gone to school for more than 16 years and working hard to maintain good grades to keep funding and grants coming in, sometimes the pressure becomes so great that your health suffers as a result. If you are a graduate student seeking a master’s degree in your field or a higher education leadership degree, then it is imperative that you understand the pressures of graduate work and find ways to maintain your health while fighting the pressures you are under day after day. It may sound funny, but your object is to stay alive – academically as well as physically. Here are a few tips that should help.
Understand Your Style of Learning and Stay in It
Never before has a student been able to actually study in any way they need to in order to excel. Some students do best in a traditional classroom and others function better working on their own with nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection. If you want to avoid inordinate amounts of stress while seeking an online doctor of education degree, for example, you should take the time to understand how you learn best and stay within your style to reduce the stress you are faced with. If you study better alone then pursue an online degree. If you work better in a classroom setting because you thrive on the interaction with others, then by all means get your degree in the conventional way. If you want to eliminate stress, don’t put more of it in your life than necessary.
Pace Yourself – Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
For sure it’s an old cliché, but truer words of wisdom were never spoken. Unfortunately, this isn’t always something you can do in a traditional on-campus situation where you are bound by deadlines and assignments due the next day. However, with the advent of distance learning you can get an online doctor of education in higher education leadership degree. This is a high stress undertaking, but it can be much more stress free because you are pacing yourself. You are studying online so you can make your hours and step back if you need to.
Any online program such as an online EDD program gives you more freedom than in a traditional setting. This should help to alleviate much of the stress you are facing just by being a graduate student and probably even holding a full-time job at the same time. You have heard it said that stress kills and so it does. Not only is your health in jeopardy with undue amounts of stress, but so too is your academic career. You want to stay alive long enough to get that degree and you want to live life long enough to enjoy all the places having a graduate degree will take you. Perhaps the best way to reduce those levels of stress is to study online. If you are overwhelmed, it’s one way to lighten your load, so in the end, it may be your very best option. Why not give it a try?