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Matias Lopez
Ms. Bethany LaShell
ENG111_193
22 September 2015
Resting not Stressing
As someone who works around 80+ hours in just about two weeks, you could say that
sometimes I can get stressed. Being stressed can have very negative effects on not just my mind,
but my body too. I can start to become unhealthy, due to loss of appetite from stress. I can
become depressed and lose motivation to do anything. There is also the possibility that I can
stress myself out to the point where I can no longer focus on something and accidently injure
myself. Stressing out is one of the worst things a person can do to themselves, but also one of the
easiest things they can do. I will be focusing on what causes stress in people around my age.
Almost every adult in todays society works, or tries to. They wake up, and for five or six
days of the week they go to the same place, and from five to maybe even twelve hours, they
repeat the same task, that is what having a job is like. Now, many people including me can work
a lot more than that, eight to sometimes almost ten hour shifts of doing the same thing. Another
influence on being stressed out at work is the fast paced environment. Working in any restaurant
can get very hectic especially when working in a kitchen when it gets busy. Sometimes there can
be so many people there that we cannot have anyone inside and there becomes a line out of the
door. That is when the stress starts to happen, managers tell everyone to go faster and get things
done quicker, you also have people asking for the things they need as quickly as possible, and
eventually it gets to your head that you need to be better, and you become stressed. Work-

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related stress is a major occupational problem globally because of its negative influence on
workers' health and productivity and companies' profit (Cox, Griffiths, & Rial-Conzalez,
2000; de Smet et al., 2005). This quote by Ms. Cox shows exactly what I was talking about,
working for so long and becoming stressed can not only hurt you, but it can also hurt your job.
You become less motivated to work and in response, your work begins to suffer.
Another big factor in my stress along with work is being in school. Being in school and
working at the same time means I wake up, go to class, come back home, and immediately have
to get ready for work. Doing that five or six days of the week can lead to even more stress
because while I am at work I worry about if there was some classwork I forgot to do that is due
that night, or if I have something to remember to bring, stressing me out even more. Stress
caused by students in college is a global problem too. In terms of the
psychological health complaints and symptoms, mental health issues are increasing in severity
and number on college campuses (El Ansari, Walid, Reza Oskrochi, and Ghollamreza Haghgoo,
2015), in this quote the authors talk about and go further into detail in their writing about how
college students stress is increasingly becoming a bigger problem. Many students can suffer
healh problem from being so stressed out, so imagine combining that with also the stress of
working every day along with that.
The effects that stress can cause on the body can easily be seen by anyone. This quote by
the same authors examines the four major symptoms students show, Factor analysis of
the health symptoms generated four symptom groups for each of the UK and Egypt
(psychological; circulatory/breathing; gastrointestinal; and, pains/aches), and factor loadings
were quite similar for both countries. (El Ansari, Walid, Reza Oskrochi, and Ghollamreza
Haghgoo, 2015). These four common symptoms are shown by anyone under large amounts of

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stress, and as someone who can get overwhelmed by stress I can personally say that I have felt
these symptoms as well. When stressed out at work I can generally feel my breath shorten,
making it harder to breathe, I can feel pain in my stomach and areas I use to work such as my
hands and legs even if I dont move that much. Psychological problems such as me telling myself
to be better or to work harder happen all the time. These also carry over into school as well.
As a college student and an almost full time employee I think the causes of stress in
people especially my age are many. Students and workers should worry more about their health,
as they cannot work if they are not healthy. They should try to relax if possible, ask for a few
days of to collect themselves and calm down and then return to work, because no person should
stress themselves literally to death. Causing yourself to stress out is one of the worst things any
person could do.

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Works Cited
Kinnunen-Amoroso, Maritta, and Juha Liira. "Finnish Occupational Health Nurses' View
of Work-Related Stress: A Cross-Sectional Study." Workplace Health & Safety 62.3 (2014): 10512. ProQuest. Web. 22 Sep. 2015.
El Ansari, Walid, Reza Oskrochi, and Ghollamreza Haghgoo. "Are Students' Symptoms
and Health Complaints Associated with Perceived Stress at University? Perspectives from the
United Kingdom and Egypt." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public
Health 11.10 (2014): 9981-10002. ProQuest. Web. 22 Sep. 2015.