Ask Santa for a stress ball and more holiday anxiety tips

The holidays are supposed to be a time for relaxing and enjoying time with family and friends.

If you're a college student, you know better.

For most of us, the holiday season coincides with spring class registration, end-of-semester term papers and a slew of final exams, leaving many students stressed out, sleep deprived and wondering where all the time went - especially the time to do all that holiday shopping.

The Diamondback asked psychology lecturer and the university's own holiday stress expert, Thomas Capo, to offer some advice on getting through the holidays with body and mind in one piece.

Taking on exam season

OK, so this advice may be late in coming, but the key to avoiding a meltdown over all the papers and exams piling up is simple time management, according to Capo.

"A lot of times students take books home with well-intentioned delusions of reading them over Thanksgiving break." Capo said. "I used to do the same thing, and you're just going to carry them back to school."

Instead of waiting until the end of the semester to catch up on work, Capo urges students to maintain a balanced schedule throughout the semester in order to have less stress when finals week rolls around.

He warns against "trying to cram a whole semester's worth of information right before finals," something he said causes stress, leading to sleep deprivation and sickness, which can in turn be stressors.

"Sleep deprivation is the number one cause of stress-related illness in students," Capo said.

"When students are stressed, the body releases stress hormones," he added. "The job of these hormones is to maintain the body's ability to function under stress in the short term by suppressing other body functions such as the immune response. Prolonged suppression of this is why so many students are sick around this time of year."

Sophomore journalism major Katie Bloom can attest to that.

"I'm so sick right now," said Bloom, who said she gets about four to five hours of sleep each night during this time of year, about two hours less than usual. "I think my lack of sleep definitely has something to do with it."

"I also just finished registering for classes," she said. "I guess my advising appointment was my big stressor."

Capo recommends making use of the counseling center's Learning Assistance Services geared toward helping students balance their schedules.

Shopping

When it comes to holiday shopping, Capo dishes out similar advice to students.

"I always tell students, 'Don't be one of those people who have to go out on Black Friday,'" he said. "You're going to have to buy gifts anyway, so rather than buy them all at once, buy them over the course of six months. It'll be less of a bite out of your wallet."

Sophomore economics major Joyce Whitehead takes such advice to heart.

"If I get up at 5 a.m. to go to the store, the last thing I want to see is 500 other people waiting in line," she said. So, she's come up with other ways to tackle the holiday shopping frenzy without ever leaving her dorm room.

"I online shop and give gift cards online." Whitehead said. "I also send gifts in the mail because I know I won't make it to everyone's house."

Capo also suggests giving friends and family simple yet thoughtful gifts like gift cards, magazine subscriptions or framed photographs.

"A picture of yourself in a not-so-expensive frame for a great-aunt or -uncle is within a student's budget and is pretty easy to handle," he said.

The holiday waistline

It's not just all the turkey and cranberry sauce that can threaten that diet.

During the holidays, stress and sleep deprivation can have just as big an impact on waistlines as an apple pie or homemade cookies, Capo said.

"When you're under stress, normal body functions get put on the back burner," Capo said, "so food isn't going to be digested properly."

"In times of stress, stress hormones like cortisol can interfere with the normal metabolism of the food you take in," he said. "You can set your mind to not eat all those cookies or drink a lot, and you can really try to behave yourself and still put on weight if you're not getting enough sleep or are under stress."

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