A Guide to Stress Relief for the Working Student

If you are attending pharmacy school full time and you are working, it’s likely you are dealing with a great deal of stress juggling both your studies for your pharmacy online degree and your job. This guide to stress relief will make it a little easier to be a working student and a full time student at one of the schools of pharmacy. 

Attending an online pharmacy school is one way to reduce your stress load because the demands on your time are more flexible than if you are attending classes at your local college. Not only does it allow you to juggle your schedule better, it also costs less to attend removing yet another stress (money) from your life. 

Identifying your stress is a good place to start. Is it because you have conflicts between your schedule as a working student and your pharmacy school classes? Is it because you have to juggle school, work, and kids? Is it that the schools for pharmacist degree programs have a huge number of assignments and a lot of memorization? What ever it is, once you identify it the situation becomes less stressful. 

Being prepared for your stress helps you to manage your stress. If you are unsure or uncertain, this can lead to making mistakes at either work or at school. For example, address an uncertainty by creating a list of what is expected of you for your next assignment, when is it due, and when can you dedicate time to it. Knowing what you are facing helps to reduce stress. 

Good planning can also help you reduce your stress load. For example, you work Monday, Friday, and Saturday evening so you know you cannot work on your essay until after 10:00 at night. You have exactly one week to complete your project so you will need to spend Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday on your project. Having a plan reduces your stress. 

Have a look at how you are currently handling your stress. Do you smoke, drink too much, overeat, not eat, zone out in front of the TV, use drugs, sleep too much, put things off, or withdraw from family and friends? Identify how you handle stress now and then decide if there are healthier ways to handle that stress.  

You can help relieve some of your stress by saying “no.” You know what your limits are. Stick to them and don’t let anyone make you feel guilty. Whether it’s at work, at home, or at your pharmacy assistant school, you are only one person and you can only do so much. By living within your limits, you instantly reduce your stress. 

It’s always helpful to avoid people that actually cause you to stress out. If there is a person in your life that stresses you out and no matter what you do, you can’t change the situation, then it’s time to avoid that person.  

If it’s a boss, it’s time to change departments or even change jobs. If it’s an instructor at your online pharmacy school, you need to ask to be transferred to another instructor’s roster, or if it’s someone in your personal life, you need to distance yourself from them.   

Take your to do list and cut it in half. Yes, that’s right “half.” You decide what responsibilities, tasks, or parts of your schedule you are going to hand off to someone else. Some tasks can simply be dropped and not worried about at the current time. Some tasks like your online pharmacy tech school exam can’t be changed, and everything else falls somewhere in between those two extremes. Be realistic and learn to give up control. It will reduce your stress load significantly. 

Stress is part of our lives. Extra stress because you are attending one of the top pharmacy colleges and you are a working student, is to be expected. Too much stress is not good so learn to deal with it in a healthy way.


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