Do adult students on full-time courses suffer from stress Hypothesis - Essay Example

ss” (from the Latin dis = bad, as in dissonance, disagreement), and “eustress” (from the Greek eu =good, as in euphonia, euphoria)…However, the fact that eustress causes much less damage than distress graphically demonstrates that it is “how you take it” that determines ultimately, whether one can adapt successfully to change.(p.6) Thus, stress may affect an individual positively or negatively. It depends on one’s outlook of the situation. Do adult students on full-time courses suffer from stress?

Based on Seyle’s definition, the answer would have to be in the affirmative. Firstly, the adult student would experience distress because as an adult one has several responsibilities namely, children, family, work, or one may even be in the process of fostering a social relationship which will require quality time. As Seyle implied distress or eustress is determined by the individual’s perception of the circumstances. Consequently, an individual who has family responsibilities and is also a full-time student may view the course as a distressing factor because the time lost in attending these courses may have been used to obtain a job that would provide income to attend to the needs of the family.

This individual may experience and perceive this lost time as depressing and as a result may respond negatively to the conditions , thus worsening his/her mental and physical well-being. Contrastingly, the same individual could decide to take a different perspective and recognize the value of this time as an investment into procuring a job with better-quality remuneration that could not otherwise be acquired. This student, then by changing his/her viewpoint can reduce the stress level from a high threshold to a low level.

Moreover, the acquisition of skills and knowledge allows one to obtain increased earnings. The National Center for Education Statistics purports that the median earnings of males with a college degree in 1993 were $33,000 which was