Reporter: Hannelle Yang
Holed up in your room at 2 AM, you spend a few nights cramming tests and AP exams. With the fi-nal weeks of school creeping up on students, life can be difficult to manage. Due to final exams sig-nificantly contributing to overall grades, pressure is high, and every decision counts. According to an article touching on the impacts of end-semester exams, Jacki Craft informs, “Despite the various sources of stress, data reveals that finals and midterms accounted for the top source of stress for 31% of U.S. students.” With so much on students’ plates, there seems to be no time to relax or go to the gym, limiting the options for a break. What could be done in times like these?
Well, if you have 15 minutes to spare, take a step outside and circle a few laps around the street. You can improve your mood, blood flow, and circulation just by walk-ing a block or two, as walking has been proven beneficial to your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The HPA axis is the central nervous response system that monitors stress, meaning by positively influencing your HPA, you can calm your nerves. Even if it seems like a short walk around the neighborhood would do noth-ing, reconnecting with nature and practicing simple, consistent movement can help refresh your brain from the mounds of school-work. Yan, a busy high school stu-dent, admits that pacing around her backyard for a mere ten min-utes has helped her “focus more on her work and makes her more motivated.” She claims that by incorporating a little bit of move-ment into her daily routine, she has improved her performance in school: “Just a simple exercise like walking your dog and stuff, you know, around the streets and stuff really– uh, I don’t know, it just makes me feel a lot better about the day– and myself, too.”
With a healthy, balanced rou-tine, 15 minutes of walking can greatly boost your performance and create a fulfilling experience. Walking is an extremely easy and accessible way of relieving stress for many students who cannot spare much time, making it a perfect solution for the pressure from the final weeks of school. In fact, another student, Rosales, has used his daily walks as a study ses-sion for his classes: “Something that really helped me on the test is I listen to AP Spanish podcasts on Spotify when I walk my dog, just being outside helps me focus more– especially on sunny days.” Sometimes, complex situations have simple solutions, and all we have to do is find a new way to solve them. Despite the stress students may be going through, reducing stress could be as simple as a walk in the park.
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