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Show maafim anr?mi a good support system family, friends, advisers can help a lot When everything becomes too much, out, so I do, but during the week, it's time to do work, so I do." Finding your own limits is tricky, but vital. "For each person there is an optimal level of stress at which they will function well," says counselor Corazzini of Virginia Commonwealth. "Anxiety will push some people the night before the paper is due, and they'll get the job done. Others become dysfunctional and need to start a week early." And some fortunate beings actually thrive on stress. David Sze, a Yale senior in economics and political science, courts stress the way other people court dates. "I probably go to half my classes," he says, infuriatingly. "I usually don't do any work until reading period. Then I work really hard, absolutely manic. I always tell myself I won't do this again, but I make it through, and it happens again." Balancing act: Few people are quite that lucky. For them, the experts recommend whatever relaxation techniques might work, from meditating to aerobic exercise. Extracurricular activities can ease tensions unless you become involved so deeply or in so many that they start running your life. "Trouble starts when you don't have a good balance of all the activities you want to do," says Diane Dougherty, assistant dean of student affairs at Grinnell. Tulane junior Richard Chamberlain, a varsity swimmer, had to struggle to find the right mix. When he first arrived on campus he "didn't want to go to class, didn't want to go to swim practice and didn't want to study," Chamberlain recalls. "All I wanted to do was sleep. But then I realized I just had to cope, and that things were as bad as they were going to get." Resisting the temptation to drop swimming, he is now on the varsity team, a resident adviser and member of Tulane 's honors program. Yale junior Richard Rothschild also struck his own balance. "Freshman year I tried to do everything at once and didn't finish anything," he recalls. "Then last year I did just one thing at a time. The feeling of accomplishment I got after finishing one thing and moving on to the next helped me to go on." When coping fails, it's time for treatment and student stress, burnout and depression are all eminently treatable. strategies now abound. At Virginia Commonworkshops of five wealth, for instance, sessions help teach students deep muscle relaxation, time manpointers. NYU's Moore, whose counagement and students a year, concentrates on 450 sees about seling service making them aware of their bodies and attuned to fatigue, headaches and other warning signs. "Being more aware of stress enables you to manage it better," he says. In more severe cases, therapy might be required. A threshold of therapy, according to Dr. Andrew Thompson of Oregon's Counseling Center, is to get students back into the swing of things "interested in their daily routine and activities again." 'Weird and obsessive': One political-scienc- e major at Yale is in even the can what of accomplish good counseling living proof most extreme cases. Anorexic in high school, she started running for long periods every day at Yale. "It became weird and obsessive," she recalls. "Every day I added a few minutes and had to run the exact same route. I couldn't take change." Her weight down to 84 pounds, she entered a hospital and took a leave. When she returned in 1986, she was bulimic popping laxatives like candy mints. Returning home that Christmas, she found her parents "were destroying each other," and reacted, she said, by overdosing on antidepressant pills in a suicide attempt. But when she returned to school last spring, "Yale didn't ignore me," she says. "I had weekly appointments with my dean, met my psychiatrist twice a week and had weekly Now she feels she is on the road to mental health. weigh-ins.- " But therapy can only rescue those who seek it. Some stigma remains. At Tulane, says social worker Nelkin, "it's the kids who sit by themselves in their dorm rooms and think about suicide that we need to reach." Or, do more than think about it, like the Tulane freshman, depressed over a breakup with his girlfriend and other personal problems, who hanged himself last month after only a week at school. Obviously, the failure to seek counseling is at most a stage for students so depressed that they could commit suicide. And obviously, too, only a relative handful of students get anywhere near this stage, regardless of the pressure. But the consequences surrounding burnout are genuinely worrisome for other reasons, ones that apply to every student. College is where students confront some of the greatest strains of their lives and also where they can find more unhealthy ways of esIt caping than there are books in the is also the last best place to learn how to cope a talent that may get you through not only final exams but a divorce, a firing, a death after graduation. Stress can have its benefits. If, that is, it is faced down, and conquered, in the relatively sheltered workshop of campus. Short-ter- m stress-manageme- nt test-takin- g Co-o- p. Sharon Begleyu;ji Terry Allen BruceEmondm Grinnell, Iowa, Jonathan Epstein in NewOrleans, in Los A ngeles, Julie Heller in New Haven. Kathleen McKernan Stephen VEsrinNew To 10 NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS York in South Bend. reports and bureau the breaking point: Costs keep rising OCTOBER 1( |