Instructors Are People, Too: Ideas for Reducing Faculty Stress at Exam Time
Posted December 9, 2014
By Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener
@biswasdiener
You may be familiar with the study by Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng regarding the effects of exam stress on undergraduates. Simply put, students’ personal health and hygiene plummet during the stretch of intense testing at the middle and end of most academic terms. Specifically, Oaten and Cheng found that students drank more coffee, exercised less and decreased the frequency with which they washed their hair, brushed their teeth, and did their dishes. Gross. Even if you aren’t familiar with the study you probably have noticed some end-of-term changes in your classroom. There are more empty seats than usual. Students are more likely to pull you aside with tales of personal hardship or to ask for extensions on work deadlines. As a result, many instructors provide helpful hints for getting through exam stress. The real question is: Do instructors, themselves, follow these guidelines?
We are more like our students than we would sometimes care to admit. The end of the term represents special hardships for instructors as well: reviewing papers, tests, and group projects. Turning in grades and meeting with worried students. Plus all that holiday shopping and travel planning. Instructors are just as susceptible to feeling down, increased alcohol consumption and decreases in exercise as are students. Therefore, it might be helpful to hear a few of those tips that you sometimes tell others:
Work It Out
Moderate physical exercise is as close to a panacea as humans have. Not only is it linked to strength, immune functioning, and longevity, it is also linked to stress. It can be helpful to remember just how powerful the effects of exercise are. In “The biology of business performance” Drs. Jack Groppel and Ben Wiegand remind us that lower performing individuals tend to push harder when in stressful situations while their higher performing counterparts are more likely to take breaks and vary activities when the going gets tough. Hit the gym, take your dog on a walk, walk up and down the stairs in your psychology department—doing something is better than nothing.
Counter the Negative with Compassion
Health psychologist Sarah Pressman offers this difficult-to-hear but very helpful advice: “remember that psychological stress and its effect on your body are predominantly in your head.” It may be that your students asking for deadline extensions or their sub-standard writing skills are not actually part of a plot to drive you crazy. People have a tendency—when in “complaint mode”—to exaggerate their own stress. Try swapping out a focus on your woes with attention to the temporary nature of the problem, with compassion for your students, and with a reminder of how wonderful and privileged it is to be a university instructor.
Don’t Give in to the Dark Side
You know the phrase "misery loves company." It turns out that people who complain seek out the validation of others. They are less interested in solving their problems than they are in hearing that they are correct. You can ease your own stress by gravitating toward more upbeat colleagues and minimizing contact with the curmudgeons.
What Works for You?
Whether you’re new to the teaching game or a seasoned veteran, we’d love to hear the kinds of things that you do to stay psychologically and physically strong during the most hectic periods of the academic calendar. Please leave us comments/ideas on our Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/NobaProject
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[Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener is the senior editor of the Noba Project and author of more than 50 publications on happiness and other positive topics. His latest book is The Upside of Your Dark Side.]
