Stress and the mature student

Stress is something that everyone experiences in their life but I was interested in the levels of stress that mature students face when making that huge step back into education.

I made that jump last year and managed to land a place doing the course that I really wanted to do. I quickly realised that as I started into my first semester there was some serious work that I needed to do to get the grades I wanted.

As the deadlines loomed and I blew the dust off my essay writing skills I realised that I was very stressed. I woke up thinking about what I had to get done, worrying about having the time to do it and was I actually doing enough. This combined with being a mother to five very sweet children I found the first wave of deadlines a big mountain to climb.

I emerged out of my first semester with great results, the stress and being out of my comfort zone really honed my ambition and fire to grasp my degree with two hands. I felt proud and realised that I wanted this so badly, that it is worth every bitten nail and late night study session.

From my personal experiences I decided to do a bit of research into how other mature students felt about juggling their workload with everyday life.

I created this survey

Here are some of the results:

I found out that most mature students feel stressed most of the time and that they spent between 5 and 20 hours studying a week outside of lessons.

 

I used one of the questions to find out what tips other mature students would give to prospective students or those who were thinking of going back into education.

If you are feeling overly stressed or not sure if you could be at risk have a look at this useful stress tester by The stress management society and some great tips to deal with stress from the charity Mind.

It’s not all worry though, going back to university is the best decision that I could have made and I wish you the best of success if you do the same.