No one would argue that college life is challenging. Students face academic overload, time management difficulties, stress or anxiety from strict deadlines and exams, etc. Some combine work and study, which makes their overall life balance hard to support.
Let alone spiritual growth!
Look: A college student, overwhelmed with tasks and craving academic success, will hardly find time to care about such — as they might think, tricky and unimportant — things like mindfulness, mental wealth, or spiritual awakening. However, all those challenges give many opportunities for spiritual growth. The trick is to know how to transform them for good.
Below are a few ways to do this.
Top Сhallenges Students Face During College Years
According to a recent study by the essay writing help company, the top five reasons college students ask their experts for assistance with assignments are as follows:
- Academic overload. A student can’t physically meet all the strict deadlines but craves high grades, thus deciding to delegate some written tasks to others. Drowning in multiple subjects, lectures, tests, and assignments, some students suffer from academic burnout — a psychological state of stress and exhaustion leading to social disconnection and the inability to maintain the same edu results and productivity.
- Pressure to succeed. It’s among the top challenges for students. They struggle to meet all the high expectations from parents, educators, and the public, based on the stereotype that one should perform well in college to succeed later in life. Afraid to fail those expectations, students get stressed or anxious, which has nothing to do with mental balance and growth.
- Social comparison. Subconsciously comparing themselves to peers, students face emotional limitations, lack in-person connections, and, as a result, can’t grow social skills.
- Lack of knowledge for academic success. Some students need better research or academic writing skills; for some, it may be challenging to learn a particular topic. ESL students may need help dealing with some complex disciplines in English.
- Study-life balance. Besides academic assessments, college students deal with social responsibility and extra activities for networking, personal life, and career. Many combine work and study, which is stressful and time- or energy-consuming.
Transforming Student Challenges Into Spiritual Growth
All the above challenges are impossible to avoid when in college, but a student can get the most benefit from them — and transform those challenges into opportunities for spiritual growth.
Below are the qualities to develop “thanks to” academic tests for spiritual awakening and inner balance:
Patience
College life is easier when one is a patient person. Patience is the quality that helps us maintain balance in the face of day-to-day stress, boost self-control, achieve long-term goals, and move through challenges more peacefully. When patient, we exercise self-regulation, learn to appreciate the present moment, and find satisfaction in our activities.
How can students transform their academic challenges into cultivating patience for positive results?
First, learn to embrace minor annoyances (sudden shifts in schedule, extra tasks “for tomorrow,” etc.) and think of them as an opportunity to practice patience. In other words, change a perspective:
Instead of considering a situation as a frustrating obstacle, let’s see it as a chance to reflect or learn something new.
Also, cultivate self-compassion and learn to avoid self-criticism when you can’t write that essay or get an A+ for your math test. It will only make you feel worse. Recognize what you can change and focus on what you can influence; accept what you can’t change to relieve stress and anxiety.
Time Management
Student challenges are an excellent opportunity to master time management skills and use them for personal growth.
The thing is that time management is about more than proper planning and organizing to-do lists like a boss to be on time with everything. These skills are also about self-awareness, goal-setting, communication, focus, and stress management — all necessary for a body-spirit balance and inner harmony.
When students, we can establish routines and set boundaries to encourage prioritization, thoughtful planning, and wise decision-making. All are critical for academic growth, but they also boost the strive for balance we need for a happy and proactive life.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to understand their feelings, manage them, and recognize and influence the emotions of others around us. It’s a set of soft skills that include self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills — all critical for personal and professional life.
Together with the hard skills students learn in college to become specialists in their chosen niches, EI is a must to grow to understand people, know their inner world, and boost spirituality and mental growth.
How can student challenges help us become more emotionally intelligent?
We learn to recognize our emotions during various academic activities and understand how they influence our actions. Thus, it will be easier for us to adapt to changing circumstances and healthily manage emotions.
Emotional intelligence is also about empathy. Understanding the emotions of their peers during academic challenges, students promote effective communication and can offer support, which is also critical for building and maintaining healthy relationships with the world.
Long Story Short
Despite the numerous challenges students face and have to overcome in college, they can use these hardships as opportunities for spiritual growth. We’ve covered a few ways how to transform a challenge and take the most out of it for personal development, and we encourage you to try them and search for others. The more we pay attention to our inner world and care about its depth, the better.
