College life is hard. There is no denying that. With all of the classes, extracirculars,
shadowing, and job experience that one is tasked with, it is absolutely no shock to anyone that
burn out is inevitable. If you are a pre-med student, like me, then it feels even harder to keep up.
The room for unhealthy coping mechanisms continues to grow the longer the quarter, year, or
degree duration goes on. As someone who has gone through various, “not super helpful” coping
mechanisms, I wanted to make a blog that would introduce others, including Honors Students, to
coping mechanisms that could help and calm the waves of stress that hit them. In terms of the
first coping mechanism that I wanted to cover, I wanted to bring up doing reinforcing things for
yourself. I may be starting with this because I am a psychology major (don’t me recognizing my
bias here). When my friend came to visit during winter break, she and I did a craft where we
made visual punch cards to track some rewarding experiences for ourselves. For example, I made
a coffee punch card where I am able to “redeem” a coffee from a nearby coffee shop every time I
completed an exam or huge assignment. Obviously, part of the motivation in academic life is
intrinsic. However, I find that “treating myself” after particularly hard tasks allows me to feel
more motivated to work for them and even makes me feel less dread upon tests approaching.
Even if I don’t do as well on a test as I hoped, at least I get a coffee for my effort afterwards! In
order to make me stick to this ritual, I put extra effort into making my punchcard appealing to the
eye. An additional distressing part of this, that I didn’t plan for originally, was the financial
aspect of saving money by limiting my coffee sprees. After using this technique for a while, I
definitely see myself continuing to prioritize rewarding myself for my large academic
achievements.
About the Author
My name is Emma Lorens and I am currently a freshman at DePaul getting my major in psychology. I am aiming to be become a psychiatrist. The topic of this series, coping mechanisms, are important to be because they allow people to overcome difficulties that are inevitable in life.
Read more on the Honors Blog.
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