Loyalist's students exhausting counselling services during exam time

By Taylor Renkema

Stressed students at Loyalist College are exhausting the school’s counseling resources in these last few weeks of the semester, according to Loyalist Colleges health officials.

Loyalist school nurse Lauren Deans said she notices a definite increase in the number of stressed students in the health centre this time of year.

“Stress depletes your body of its healing powers and affects your immune system too,” she said. “What you’ll find is people stressing about exams and once they’re done, it’s like, okay, now I can get sick.”

Deans said she often recommends that students visit the college counsellors, or the mental health nurse, Valerie Geen.

“If they’re stressed and they don’t have a good plan on how to deal with it, the counsellors and Valerie, they can give you some tools to work with the stress.”

Geen and the counsellors were booked solid with appointments all this week and had no time for interviews.

Student Success Director Cathy O’Rourke said she does not know exactly how many students book appointments, but notes the types of meetings this time of year are quite different.

“During the first week of October we see different issues such as homesickness, roommate issues, and financial concerns.  At this time of year, there are many more academic stressors,” she said.

Jacob Vanier, a second-year architecture student, said teachers pile a lot of work on them in the final month of the semester.

“In architecture in particular, it’s more of a poor organization thing, and teachers aren’t stretching stuff out appropriately,” he said. “To me the semester’s just plain not long enough.”

Vanier said he thinks the architecture, nursing and TV new media programs have the hardest workload.

“I was brought up to simply deal with the stress of things, but I do my best to sleep in on the days that I can, and I play Xbox to relax a bit when my homework is done,” he said.

Eric Connell, a TV new media second-year student, said he often loses sleep over homework.

“I have had nights where I just did projects and before I knew it, it was dawn. There were so many nights like that this semester. I find I eat whenever I get a chance. If I am too busy getting homework done, I just forget to eat. It’s not healthy at all,” Connell said.

He said it’s also about how the assignments are weighted.

“The projects we had at the start of the semester were worth about 10 per cent while the projects now are worth 45 per cent. I have two projects that are worth 45 per cent and then I have smaller projects and tests along with every day in-class projects, he said.

Kiel Chourney is a mature student in his first year of the construction renovation techniques program. He said coming back to college is a very different learning curve than for students straight out of high school.

“The instructor teaches in a different way from the way you remembered, leading to less then spectacular test scores. The social life as well for mature students doesn’t help the stress level. The life at home is now settled with a job, kids, and bills, unlike your average younger college student,” he said.

He said having a young daughter can make studying at night difficult, and often leads to cramming for tests and assignments.

Elsa Baragar, a second-year student in the social service worker program, is involved in the Jack Project at Loyalist, a program started to raise awareness about mental health and suicide prevention.

Baragar said young adults and students have unique types of stress that can really pile up.

“When you’re at this age you’re a lot more sensitive to stressers,” she said. “There are a lot of different things going on mentally, physically and socially as well. You’re under a lot of pressure whether you’re female or male. Then you’ve got school or work on top of that.”

Baragar said there are big issues right now surrounding people “coming out of the closet” in terms of alternative sexual orientation.

“There’s a lot of struggle with people coming out right now, whether they’re gay, lesbian or transgender, it’s a very difficult demographic,” she said. “They struggle quite a lot because of bullying.”

Baragar said stress could trigger a lot of mental health symptoms.

“When you’re unable to handle day-to-day activities, it really puts a damper on your motivation to do anything,” she said. “It makes you feel like you can’t go on with your day.”