The life of a college student can be really stressful for several reasons. It’s hard moving away from home, living on your own, and dealing with mass amounts of homework and other extracurricular stress. In the midst of this stressful time, it becomes easy to turn to toxic coping mechanisms.
A great way to cope with the stress of college is to simply widen your perspective. It’s so easy for a student to get caught in a pattern of tunnel vision. I mean, our academic schedules are fairly predictable and somewhat rigid, so it makes sense that we often feel trapped to our regular routine and unable to stretch our perspective beyond the immediate stressors of school, friends and everything else. But it’s so important to recognize just how big our lives really are, and how endless our possibilities can be. One surefire way of widening your perspective on the world is to spend more time outside: specifically, more time hiking.
Hiking is a really great antidote to feeling trapped as a college student. During this time in our lives, a lot of our stress comes from feeling trapped. We feel like we’re being dragged along by the expectations thrown at us from our classes, our extracurriculars and our friends. Oftentimes college students don’t even realize how trapped they feel until they take a moment to themselves. Hiking is the perfect way to take that moment, and then to work through those feelings of frustration. The best part? You don’t even need to think about it! The simple acts of moving, walking and exploring are enough to take our minds to higher places, enough to transport us to a world where we no longer feel like we’re living with tunnel vision.
Not only that, but hiking obviously has a lot of health benefits. While Mavs do have access to the Hamilton Recreation Center and the Mav Pav, I know that working out isn’t for everyone. Hiking is a great way to get a little exercise in while enjoying some beautiful scenery, and it’s less of a production than lifting weights or running miles. We as college students spend so much time sitting down in class and studying, and spending so much time sedentary can have a lot of negative health effects. This is why it’s beyond important to find a physical activity that works for you, and for many people, that’s hiking.
Yesterday I spent about an hour up at the monument, only a 10-minute drive from home. I went alone because I prefer being alone, but I probably would have gotten the same result from the experience if I went with someone else. Being up there, away from everything and surrounded by nature, made me forget about everything that was stressing me out at the moment, and I just started thinking about how big the world is and how small my problems are. I know that going up to the monument is something that I’m going to try to incorporate into my routine this school year, so that I can experience the numerous physical and mental health benefits it’ll provide.
