With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and the coming hyper-connected post-COVID world, distance learning is now more popular than ever before. Yet, it’s bringing with it a new wave of problems, including anxiety, stress, and other mental health issues.
Since distance learning is a relatively new thing, these unforeseen problems are still being discovered, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about them. If you’re worried about your mental health and looking for solutions, this article offers some essential tips to help you out.
Stay Social
Whether you’re a day student commuting to school or mixing it up with remote learning, it’s easy to feel disconnected from your peers. I remember leaving campus early every day because I needed to catch a train and travel home for two hours, meaning I usually missed out on socializing after lectures.
I had massive FOMO (fear of missing out), as other students were developing meaningful connections and relationships while I was not. This was hard on my mental health and made me feel disconnected and lonely. Instead, I took time to socialize and make special arrangements to hang out with people to prevent this from happening.
Look After Yourself
Between learning, studying, and working from home, it can be hard to remember or find the time to do all those simple things you should be doing to look after yourself and keep your mental health in the best possible shape. This includes the basics, such as exercising regularly, eating healthy, getting enough hours of sleep, having a routine, spending time with your family, and so on. Keeping up with these basics and getting yourself a stable routine will do wonders for your happiness and peace of mind!
Prioritize Time Management
Distance learning can save you time in travel, but other complications such as finding a reliable internet connection and not having direct access to teachers can make it harder. Being at home can also make it hard to stay on a schedule. Failure to manage your time properly will make you feel stressed out and overwhelmed.
Make time management a priority and focus up as much as possible. The more organized and prepared you can be, the better because you’ll massively reduce the risk of missing something, then having to deal with the resulting stress.
Take Breaks
Breaks are essential because it can be so easy to work yourself into the ground and burn out if you’re not careful. Between working, socializing, commuting, and looking after yourself, you need to have breaks when you’re taking the time to do something you love and recharge your batteries.
This can be easier said than done, especially with stresses of work and mounting deadlines, but this is where everything ties in together. Take time to breathe and have some fun, and be sure to schedule break time in your time management efforts.
Check-in With Yourself
Most importantly, if you have one takeaway from this guide and article of tips, let it be this. No matter what you’re doing in life and no matter how good or bad things are, ensure you’re taking time to check in with yourself. This means asking yourself how you are and being honest with the answer, and not hiding any stressed feelings from yourself.
“To hide from yourself, to push all the feelings of stress and anxiety down, while trying to convince yourself that everything’s okay, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Instead, be honest with yourself, so you can move forward and get help or take action whenever you need to,” shares Nikki Turner, a writer on psychology topics.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several things you can do to look after yourself while reducing the risk of stress and anxiety while you’re a distance-learning student, and a lot of it will come with trial and error. It requires you to look within yourself, to focus, and be proactive. Like in every part of life, the more effort you put in, the more you’ll get out of it.
About the Author: Christina Lee is a tutor and educational writer, and blogger at Write My Australia and Student Writing Services. She writes to help students make the most of available resources and services, especially in a post-COVID world and posting on sites such as academicadvisor.com and others.
Photo by Firza Pratama on Unsplash
The opinions and views expressed in any guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of www.rtor.org or its sponsor, Laurel House, Inc. The author and www.rtor.org have no affiliations with any products or services mentioned in the article or linked to therein. Guest Authors may have affiliations to products mentioned or linked to in their author bios.
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