Learn how stress results from the way you interact with your environment.
Learn to recognize your stress triggers.

“I have worked full time throughout my graduate program. I drive an hour each way, often staying nights. At some point I am bound to burn out.”

“My advisor is one of the only two female faculty in our department. On my first day of graduate school she told me, ‘Women have to work twice as hard as men to get anywhere in this field, so you better get used to it now’ and has piled on the workload ever since.”

If you have felt stressed out in graduate school, you are not alone! In a 2018 national survey, over 67% of graduate student women and 52% of men reported they experienced more than average or tremendous stress within the last 12 months (American College Health Association, 2018). The mental health impacts of recent pandemics have only elevated these numbers (See Mental Health and Delays and Setbacks modules for more)

You experience stress when your personal resources are not adequate to meet the demands you face. When what you expect of yourself or others expect of you exceeds the resilience skills you can apply, you will more than likely feel anxious and discouraged.

Stress represents a difference between the assets you bring to a situation and those that are required. In that sense, stress requires you to change and adapt. Some amount of stress or challenge can motivate you to complete tasks, do your best, stretch, and meet your goals. But when stress levels get too high, your relationships, focus, productivity, self-care, and health can all be affected negatively.

Stress is pervasive (Selye, 1956). Major life stressors like divorce, illness, significant caretaking responsibilities, and dual-career conflicts with a spouse or partner can disrupt your life and be harmful to your physical and mental health.  However, the day-to-day accumulation of small and recurrent stressors can have a similarly big effect on your stress level (DeLongis et al., 1982).  These daily hassles and repeated stressors, left unchecked, can add up over time to discourage you, diminish your productivity, and interfere with your well-being.  

Self-test

Which of the following can be a source of stress?

For many, starting a doctoral program means adjusting to a new locale, finding suitable housing, being separated from family and friends, learning the ropes of grad school, and, of course, having a heavy workload. Then, graduate students cope with an extended and sometimes indeterminate period of research and apprenticeship along with unpredictable financial support and career uncertainty. Additionally, outside of graduate school, students encounter a variety of personal issues that can raise anxiety and complicate or even interfere with academic progress.

For STEM women, graduate school can be a particularly trying time since the environment can be chilly and rife with daily hassles. Below are a few examples of what women report about graduate science and engineering programs that they find stressful:

• Competitive, hierarchical academic culture
• Problems with mentors and/or advisors
• Isolation and marginalization
• Imbalance between graduate work and personal life
• Sexism and gender stereotypes
• Gender and racial microaggressions (See Microaggressions)
• Conflicting work styles and goals with co-workers
• Publication and research productivity pressures
• Financial pressures

Recognize that stress is not simply a function of the environment or immediate situation. Rather, you interact with what is happening in a way that may result in your experiencing stress (Charles et al., 2013).Your personal characteristics influence whether you judge something as stressful and how you respond. For example, you are more likely to experience stress if you:

• Set unreasonably high expectations and are harshly critical of yourself when things do not go as planned (Cho & Hayer, 2020; Cohen et al., 2016). 
• Doubt your abilities to cope with the situation at hand (Coping and Self-Efficacy)
• Interpret the situation as threatening to your well-being
• Encounter something or someone that triggers your particular vulnerabilities, core values, or “soft spots”

Below is a chart that represents stress as an interaction between your personal characteristics and the environment:

Self-test

Self Test

Maricella has been feeling overwhelmed lately by her academic demands. She has multiple exams and papers due in the upcoming weeks, and she is under some tight deadlines in her lab. During a conversation with her partner, Maricella became upset when her partner was answering emails on his phone while she was talking to him, which led to an argument. Maricella knows that stress likely contributed to the conflict.

Among the following options, what would be the best for helping her deal with her stress effectively?

Have you ever wondered why even the smallest thing can set you off? There are two primary reasons why this happens. First, the small thing may simply be the last in a chain of unpleasant events or microstressors that combine to form the “big bang.” Think of the proverbial “straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

But there is another reason that something seemingly insignificant can evoke your strong response. It has to do with signaling danger or hopelessness. Here are some examples:

• A labmate scowls at you across the table. Perhaps this triggers your concerns about ever fitting in with the others in the field.
• Your computer crashes. Perhaps this reminds you that your department isn't maintaining the equipment necessary for you to do your work.
• It has been two weeks since your research advisor has given you feedback on your latest draft. Perhaps you worry that you are not meeting his expectations.
• Someone in the program misgenders you again. Perhaps you feel distressed about the climate in your program.
• You run out of gas on the way home. Perhaps this convinces you it's too hard to meet your lab responsibilities and also be home for your daughter’s play.
• Your partner loses their job. Perhaps you panic thinking you won’t have enough money to finish your degree program.
• A supervisor offers you a ride. Perhaps this triggers memories of a traumatic incident.

Events or interactions are most likely to trigger stress if they touch on areas that are particularly important to you (Santiago, Bernstein & Gard, 1995). For example, if high levels of achievement are really important to you, then you are more prone to appraising a paper rejection or poor grade as threatening. 

Similarly, for women who generally place strong value on affiliation, a spat with a co-worker will trigger more stress than for someone for whom relationships are less important. Becoming aware of your central issues might help you understand better what sets you off. 

It’s important to be aware of your stress triggers so that you can assess whether your perceptions and reactions are commensurate with the situation. Similarly, for the key relationships in your academic and personal life, it’s helpful to keep their stress triggers in mind as you interact with them

Prolonged stress can lead to physical ailments such as ulcers, heart disease, high blood pressure, and insomnia. In survey after survey, a majority of respondents report that stress has an impact on their emotional well-being and physical health and contributes to their levels of irritability and anger. 

Stress negatively impacts personal relationships, causes people to be more likely to engage in unhealthy behavior, and contributes to lower productivity. Additionally, socioeconomic and racial disparities in exposure to stressors account for differences in mental and physical health consequences. Stress is not just unpleasant; it can impact your health and life in major and irreversible ways.

Stress is common in graduate school, and experiencing stress does not suggest that you are weak or don’t belong in your program. Keep in mind that your response to stress does not derive from the source of the stress but is instead a function of how you perceive and respond to difficulties and pressures. Individual differences in interpreting and responding to stress explain why two people in the same environment can experience it very differently. Expanding your coping resources will help you to resist being overwhelmed by the demands of graduate school.

CareerWISE Tips on Managing Stress Triggers
When you experience stress, you have options. You can change your expectations and anxiety-provoking situations. For example,

• Trade “perfect” for “good enough.”
• Rather than cooking elaborate meals, consider quick and healthy alternatives.
• Do not expect the house to be pristine while you are in graduate school. If your partner complains, ask them to help out.
• Consider whether insisting on all A’s in your classes will really impact your future career.
• Rearrange your spending habits so you spend more on time-saving conveniences, such as a nearby parking spot or an apartment close to campus.
• Take fewer classes during the year and enroll in the summer term.
• Set up automatic bill payment.
• Next semester, be realistic about what you can actually take on. Make sure you are scheduling in time for yourself.
• Learn to say no.

You can also change other ways you think about and react emotionally to what you find stressful. You will find more useful information on this in the How You Think and Your Emotional Styles modules.

American College Health Association. (2018). American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment II: Graduate and Professional Students Reference Group Executive Summary. Spring 2018. Silver Spring,MD: https://www.acha.org/documents/ncha/NCHA-II_Spring_2018_Graduate_Refere…

American Psychological Association, APA Working Group on Stress and Health Disparities. (2017). Stress and health disparities: Contexts, mechanisms, and interventions among racial/ethnic minority and low-socioeconomic status populations. https://www.apa.org/pi/health-disparities/resources/stress-report.pdf&n…;

Amirkhan, J. H., Landa, I., & Huff, S. (2018). Seeking signs of stress overload: Symptoms and behaviors. International Journal of Stress Management, 25(3), 301–311. https://doi.org/10.1037/str0000066

Bedewy, D., & Gabriel, A. (2015). Examining perceptions of academic stress and its sources among university students: The Perception of Academic Stress Scale. Health Psychology Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055102915596714 

Brunsma, D. L., Embrick, D. G., & Shin, J. H. (2017). Graduate students of color: Race, racism, and mentoring in the white waters of academia. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 3(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649216681565

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Cho, S., & Hayter, C. S. (2020). Under pressure: A systematic review of stress and its impact among graduate students. Science and Public Policy. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scaa053

Crum, A. J., Akinola, M., Martin, A., & Fath, S. (2017). The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 30(4), 379-395. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2016.1275585 

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El-Alayli, A., Hansen-Brown, A. A., & Ceynar, M. (2018). Dancing backwards in high heels: Female professors experience more work demands and special favor requests, particularly from academically entitled students. Sex Roles, 79(3), 136-150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0872-6

Jaremka, L. M., Ackerman, J. M., Gawronski, B., Rule, N. O., Sweeny, K., Tropp, L. R., Metz, M. A., Molina, L., Ryan, W. S., & Vick, S. B. (2020). Common academic experiences no one talks about: repeated rejection, impostor syndrome, and burnout. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(3), 519–543. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619898848 

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