Digest #176: For When You're Feeling the Pressure!
Cover image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Digest compiled by Megan Sumeracki
Right now it is mid September. At Rhode Island College we’re wrapping up week 4 of the Fall 2024 semester. Where is the time going?! It feels like everything is happening so quickly, and keeping up has been challenging for me. Talking with my colleagues this week, I learned I’m not the only one “feeling the pressure.” So, for today’s post, we have a round-up of previous Learning Scientists Blog posts about stress, burnout, and strategies to work through it.
1) Can You Avoid Burnout? by Althea Need Kaminske
This post was from January 2021. Althea writes about a new year and a fresh start after what was a particularly challenging year for so many of us, 2020. Honestly, I remember I was feeling similarly in January 2021, and of course we all know that the challenges just kept coming. But, that makes this post all the more useful, and I think it will continue to be useful year after year (unfortunately?).
2) Yerkes-Dodson: Lore, not Law by Cindy Nebel and Stress and Memory by Althea Need Kaminske
This pair of posts is one of my favorites. We were taught that Yerkes-Dodson Law was, well, a law. When stress is too low or too high, performance suffers. Then Cindy discovered, not necessarily so. Friends, we were all blown away, and I think that comes across clearly in the way these posts are written!
Althea writes, “Recently, Cindy talked about how the Yerkes-Dodson Law (or performance-arousal) is less of a law and more of a nice story about how stress influences performance…This is a lot to take in. Reader, I was shocked. I was shook. I have taught this “law” as part of my classes for the last decade. I was also more than a little embarrassed and slightly horrified that I had passed on bad information to my students without question. But, one of the joys of science is being wrong! If something is important enough for me to examine and think critically about, then I have to be open to being wrong about it. As uncomfortable as it is to find out you were wrong, I ultimately believe that it’s better to care enough to find out, than to not. (The ability to be ok with being wrong is, as it turns out, an important component of critical thinking (2)). And, ultimately, this led to a series of other questions for me to investigate. One of which was “Well, then how does stress affect memory?”
3) We Can All Use a Little Mindfulness by Megan Sumeracki
In our house, we say “coffee is love”. A warm cup of coffee and a comfy sweater helps me engage in mindfulness.
Image by fotografierende from Pixabay
Mindfulness is a tool that I use to try to reduce stress when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Here is an excerpt from the post:
“Based on research like this, I often recommend deep breathing, relaxation, and mindfulness exercises to my students, and I try to practice them myself when I can to help relieve stress. I try to explain the full state of what we know: that the research is promising but we still need more work. Still, in my view, it's a pretty low-stakes thing to try to help with stress reduction if we're practicing mindfulness and relaxation ourselves at home. (Even if some of it is just a placebo effect!) And, if mindfulness isn't your thing, remember to do something for yourself to make sure you're relieving stress. Self care is essential!”
4) Trying to Solve a Problem? Sleep on it! by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel
All too often we feel pressure to cut into our sleep time to “solve our problem” of too much to do and not enough time. When I’m stressed, I feel like I’m more likely to wake in the middle of the night, and feel like I have a harder time falling back to sleep. However, sleep is important for your body and your brain. When I’m feeling stressed and overwhelmed, I have to remind myself how important sleep is. If you need another reason to protect your sleep time, this blog post is for you!
5) Retrieval Practice and Stress by Megan Sumeracki and Help Students Believe in Themselves: Self-efficacy Boosts Exam Scores by Cindy Nebel
My students are feeling the pressure, too. These two posts are about protecting against the harmful learning effects of stress, and helping students succeed.
Bonus: Below are a few older digests we have put together related to today’s topic
Weekly Digest #86: How To Reduce Exam Stress
Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay
From time to time, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:
Digest #171: Resources for Calendars and Scheduling
Digest #173: Responsible Use of AI in Education