For most students, finals week involves a lot of stress, but many don’t know how to manage it.

The Wellness Center provides resources that can be extremely beneficial to students, such as free chair massages, make-your -own trail mix stations, advice to manage stress and study tips.

The only real issue with events offered is there aren’t enough events during exam week when stress levels are at their highest.

Everything Wellness provides is free, and in previous years, these events have shown success in reducing stress for students. While it seems there is no reason for students not to go, the issue of time is probably the biggest thing that prevents them from going. Most of the main events Wellness is holding to manage stress are this week rather than next week when students will probably need the most help.

A study done by The Princeton Review reported 85 percent of American and Canadian college students have witnessed an increase in stress during final exams, which often leads to making less healthy choices.

For any college student, this isn’t a shocking statistic because stressing out, drinking highly caffeinated beverages and
getting little sleep is considered the norm during finals week. However, Wellness wishes to change that with the events held to help students reduce and manage stress.

While Wellness has made a positive effort in advertising their events, there are other methods they could use that would probably be more effective.

For example, considering this is the first finals week for incoming freshmen, it’s likely

they’re extremely unsure of how to manage their stress and unaware of what Wellness has to offer during exam week. Wellness could reach out to these students by passing out fliers in mainly freshman
classes, such as ENC 1101 and 1102, rather than relying on students finding them.

The Wellness Center should also provide a better variety of times that these events take place during finals week. “Relax in the Wellness Center” is an event Thursday that only takes place from 11 a.m. to
1 p.m., and if students have an exam during that time then they will likely completely miss the opportunity Wellness is offering. If the event was offered multiple times throughout the week, rather than late in the week for a short time, it would likely have a greater benefit for students.

Stress is common during exam week, which means the events for managing stress should be even more common. Wellness has a lot to offer students, but if the students aren’t aware of these options because they’re too busy studying to go searching for them, then they the stress will only get worse.