Academic Challenges and the Ways to Overcome Them

Introduction

Students face a lot of stress through their academics, most of which is caused by too much pressure or lack of preparedness. Not all students who get accepted into universities graduate with the qualifications they sought to achieve. A study by Burns, (2006) found that overseas students schooling in Australia faced a lot of stress in their academics due to culture shock, different belief systems, and different attitudes towards knowledge acquisition. He found that a significant percentage of students who are admitted to universities give up their studies in their first year of college. This alone tells that academic stress can and has caused detrimental effects on students. Leaving college is not the only adverse effect of academic stress. Poor degree performance is also a direct result of academic stress among other reasons. According to Smith, & Naylor, (2001), student’s prior performance and their social background affected their later performance. However, the students’ attitudes towards education had a greater impact on their performance than their prior performance and their social background. A student’s attitude towards academics is directly influenced by the levels of academic stress they have to endure throughout their studies (Burns, 2006).

Drawing from Tinto, (2004), we find that far much important than admitting students into universities is retaining them in the universities and helping them perform well in their academics. To ensure that students do graduate from universities with excellent performance in their degrees, it is of paramount importance to help them reduce academic stress levels. In this paper, I will examine how students can gain academic success by reducing academic stress levels. Procrastination is one of the leading stressors in a student’s academic life. When a student keeps postponing their assigned academic tasks, they end up getting stressed when deadlines approach, affecting their performance negatively (Dougherty, Mellor & Jian, 2006). There are two ways that students can use to reduce stress. These are, promotion-focus and prevention-focus (Halvorson, 2010). Drawing from previous research studies, I will defend the argument that prevention-focus can help students reduce academic stress levels and therefore, improve their academic performance.

Causes

There are several intrinsic and extrinsic causes of academic stress. Students result in stress in response to the challenges they face during their courses. Three types of stress have been reported by the American Psychological Association: Acute, Acute Episodic, and Chronic acute stress (Cohen, 2014). While some students might be stressed by external factors such as punishment, others are stressed by internal factors such as lack of self-efficacy in academics and lack of motivation. Stress arising from students may arise from academic and none academic factors, including social factors, psychological, culture, and the environment. Academic stress may escalate significantly in students who have anxiety, especially in exam periods. Based on previous research conducted, almost 35% of student’s experience impairing levels of anxiety (Chapell, M. S., Blanding, Z. B., Silverstein, M. E., et al., 2005). Also, it was suggested that the number of students who drop out from universities test with anxiety which is also associated with various psychological factors such as suicidal tendencies. However, it was mostly academic factors that were the major cause of stress in most students. Below I will discuss some of the broad causes of academic stress.

Fear of Failure

Students tend to avoid assignments due to fear of failure. When a student does not trust their capabilities in class, they are likely to avoid class assignments because they fear that by trying, they will fail. This fear is what drives students to procrastinate their work and wait for the last minute, where they will be forced to complete their assignments hastily, leaving them no time to review it before submission. Other students avoid the assignments altogether and even end up dropping out of college due to the pressure. This kind of mental distress can influence academic stress in regard to anticipated academic failure or challenges. Different types of students may show stress relating to studying, tests, grades, and the self-drive to succeed.

While some students fear failure due to their personal reasons such as set academic goals, others fear failure due to other factors such as punishment or bullying. In a system where students are punished for failure, a student will always develop anxiety when exams are approaching or when they are faced with a challenge in class. This fear makes the students avoid their work or do it wrong when they do it (Chapell, et al, 2005). In systems where bullying still exists, a student will be afraid of trying something in class because they fear that other students will disapprove of them or their ideas. Other students fear failure due to the high goals set for them by their parents (Deb, Strodl, & Sun, 2015). Personal academic goals are very important for every student but when they are set without an execution plan, they might end up negatively affecting the student. For instance, if a student sets their goals too high but has no confidence in themselves, they might end up not doing anything much, fearing that they will not achieve their set goals (Hancock, 2001).

Lack of Self-Efficacy which Leads to Procrastination

Self-efficacy can be defined as a feeling of being confident in one’s personal abilities. Self-efficacy makes someone believe that they are efficient enough to accomplish tasks on their own and that they have all the resources they need to achieve their set goals. Self-efficacy belief is one of the reasons behind procrastination as identified by Hajloo, N., (2014). In his article, Hajloo explains that low levels of self-efficacy can lead to procrastination and avoidance behavior. When one feels that they do not have what it takes to complete a task, they will always postpone doing the task to the next time until they feel confident enough that they can accomplish it. Sometimes, when one has very low levels of self-efficacy, they might start tasks but leave them incomplete since they feel that they cannot complete them successfully. This has a harmful effect on a person because it develops in them the habit of procrastination. They start postponing everything they don’t feel confident enough to do to the next day or the next time (Hajloo, N., 2014).

A study by Vahedi, S., et al. (2012) revealed that college students in Iran had developed anxiety feelings about the statistics course, which led to their procrastination tendencies in registering for the class. Most of the students registered for the course as late as they could to avoid several classroom sessions and tests. This affected the overall performance in statistics as many students avoided tests by all means and this translated to a poor final result (Vahedi, S., et al, 2012). In this study, anxiety was linked to procrastination and procrastination to poor student performance (Vahedi, S., et al., 2012). In yet another study, Kim, K. R., & Seo, E. H. (2015), established that there is a negative correlation between procrastination and academic performance. Meaning that; students who have procrastination tendencies more often than not perform poorly in their academics.

Effects

Poor Academic Performance

Poor academic performance is the first indicator of academic stress. When a student has to endure a lot of stress through their course, either due to fear of failure or lack of self-efficacy beliefs, they are more likely to fail. As discussed, fear of failure leads students to anxiety, which negatively affects their academic performance. Low self-efficacy beliefs lead students to procrastinate, which affects their performance in academics. According to Halvorson, (2010), prevention focus can help students overcome academic stress caused by low self-efficacy beliefs and fear of failure. Prevention-focus is a strategy where students try their best to complete their assignments to avoid going a level lower than where they currently are. If a student’s fears to fail so much, then prevention-focus can help them avoid failing by a bigger margin if they don’t complete their assignments. If a student has low self-efficacy belief, then through prevention-focus, they can prevent capabilities from diminishing through studying more.

Self-efficacy belief has a positive impact on academic performance. When a student believes in their personal abilities, they are motivated to study more and complete all academic tasks. They never avoid tests because they believe that they can successfully tackle them. This sharpens their abilities even more and gives them a bigger push to go on working towards academic success. When a student has very low self-efficacy beliefs, the converse happens. They find themselves unable to complete academic tasks since they believe that they are not capable of successfully completing them. They avoid tests until the final minute and this negatively affects their performance and motivation to go on studying.

Dropping Out of College/University

In the worst-case scenario, academic stress can force students to drop out of college or be expelled for poor performance. If a student is continually performing poorly, they might end up being discouraged from continuing with their education and eventually drop out of the university. Academic stress explains the lesser number of students who graduate from the university at the end of the course. Psychological problems arising from too much stress also force students to drop out of college when they feel that they cannot perform as they expected or as their parents expected them to do.

In a study by Stinebrickner, & Stinebrickner, (2014), it was found that 45 % of all college dropouts were caused by poor academic performance. Once students learn that they are performing poorly in their academics, they end up dropping out of college. In this study, the researchers also found that fear of failure and lack of self-efficacy were among the leading factors that led to college drop out.

The Concept of Prevention Focus

Academic stress can be overcome using a prevention-focus approach. This is whereby as student resolves to complete their assignments to avoid more failure and to maintain their levels of capability as high as possible. Halvorson (2010) explains this concept by comparing it with promotion-focus. He gives two analogies to explain this. In the first analogy, there is John, who is the kind of person who perceives himself as always right and wouldn’t hesitate to correct you if you are in the wrong. He is also a pessimist and does not believe that anything good can come out of a hopeless situation. In the second analogy, there is John’s colleague, Randy who is the complete opposite of him. He, in contrast, is a “Yes” man and is far from being a pessimist. To better understand these two and enable them to reach their goals, Halvorson, (2010) suggests the use of the “Promotion and Prevention Focus method”.

People like Randy tend to view opportunities as a means of advancement. They focus mostly on the benefits that they will gain on the successful completion of a task. When people pursue this kind of “determination,” it is called Promotion Focus (Halvorson, H. G. 2010). Promotion focus is the kind of determination where people always seek to better themselves to make them look good in other people’s eyes. People like John on the other hand view the opportunities gained as a means of fulfilling their responsibilities or their obligations. Usually, they feel the need to be secure and to avoid doing any damage to their reputation. When people pursue this kind of “determination”, it is called Prevention focus (Halvorson, H. G. 2010).

John’s scenario can be compared favorably to that of a student who is at the risk of academic stress. Mostly, such students are pessimistic. They fear failure so much that they avoid doing their assignments, which leads them to failure. If the students were more optimistic, they would trust in their abilities enough to complete their assignments in a good time. They also wouldn’t procrastinate anything because they feel that they can get it right if they tried. Such students, therefore, face a lot of stress in their academics because they feel that they need to get things right to maintain a good impression in other people’s eyes. The best way to overcome this stress would then be through prevention-focus.

Through a prevention-focus approach, students can work towards maintaining their existing reputation as well as their already earned grades. They will not avoid their work even when they feel that they cannot perform well because they hope that by completing their work, they will be preventing further failure. They will also study hard and revise more in order to avoid lowering their grades any further. Their motivation to perform well will not come from external factors such as trying to impress others or trying to avoid punishments. Rather, they will be motivated intrinsically by the urge to outdo themselves through better performance each time they try something. Through this approach, a student can be sure that the source of motivation does not fade away with time. Even though this approach does not solve the challenges that come with studying, it does ease the students’ anxiety since they know that they have to tackle the challenges however hard they might seem. Students understand that these challenges are there to be tackled and not to be avoided because of fear of failure of feelings of incapacitation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, students are sometimes faced with academic challenges which causes them stress. Academic stress can either be low or high level, depending on the kind of stressor. Some of the most common causes of academic stress are fear of failure and lack of self-efficacy. Stress can affect students’ performance and in more adverse cases, force them to drop out of college/university. Feelings of anxiety always follow academic stress, anxiety especially during examinations adversely affects the students’ performance. Academic stress leads to procrastination, which has been proved to have a negative impact on performance. There is also, a strong relationship between procrastination and beliefs of self-efficacy. When one has low beliefs of self-efficacy, they tend to forward tasks unlike when they have high levels of belief in self-efficacy. When Students delay studying and revising for their tests until is too late to do so, it translates to failure in their academics and this might encourage dropping out of college.

References

1. Burns, R. B. (1991). Study and stress among first-year overseas students in an Australian university. Higher Education Research and Development, 10(1), 61-77.
2. Chapell, M. S., Blanding, Z. B., Silverstein, M. E., Takahashi, M., Newman, B., Gubi, A., & McCann, N. (2005). Test anxiety and academic performance in undergraduate and graduate students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97(2), 268.
3. Deb, S., Strodl, E., & Sun, J. (2015). Academic stress, parental pressure, anxiety, and mental health among Indian high school students. International Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, 5(1), 26-34.
4. Dougherty, C., Mellor, L., & Jian, S. (2006). The Relationship between Advanced Placement and College Graduation. 2005 AP Study Series, Report 1. National Center for Educational Accountability.
5. Hajloo, N. (2014). Relationships between self-efficacy, self-esteem, and procrastination in undergraduate psychology students. Iranian journal of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, 8(3), 42.
6. Halvorson, H. G. (2010). Succeed: How we can reach our goals. Penguin.
7. Kim, K. R., & Seo, E. H. (2015). The relationship between procrastination and academic performance: A meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 82, 26-33.
8. Smith, J., & Naylor, R. (2001). Determinants of degree performance in UK universities: a statistical analysis of the 1993 student cohort. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 63(1), 29-60.
9. Stinebrickner, R., & Stinebrickner, T. (2014). Academic performance and college dropout: Using longitudinal expectations data to estimate a learning model. Journal of Labor Economics, 32(3), 601-644.
10. Tinto, V. (2004). Student Retention and Graduation: Facing the Truth, Living with the Consequences. Occasional Paper 1. Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.
11. Vahedi, S., Farrokhi, F., Gahramani, F., & Issazadegan, A. (2012). The relationship between procrastination, learning strategies, and statistics anxiety among Iranian college students: A canonical correlation analysis. Iranian journal of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, 6(1), 40.