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  • Essay / Can you walk a mile at a non-traditional college...

    Can you walk a mile as a non-traditional college student? Imagine a student whose life is overwhelmed with so many college classes and work tasks that he or she must schedule time to spend with family and friends. This is the situation nontraditional students experience every day of a school semester and still trying to maintain a healthy family relationship. According to Jennifer Kohler Giancola and colleagues, in an article titled "Dealing With the Stress of College: A Model for Adult Students," Adult Education Quarterly, May 2009, "With an increase in the number of nontraditional students attending college , it is necessary to understand how stress in work, school, and life affects adult students” (246). Giancola and colleagues' statement is valid because nontraditional working students know how chaotic life is when multiple tasks extend their entire schedule. The article begins with information about the purpose of the study given to nontraditional students who have outside stressors that conflict with college. Giancola and his colleagues talk about the importance of the study and that colleges need to understand that stress affects nontraditional students, different from traditional-aged students. In this study, Giancola and colleagues discuss three components of stress to understand how stress affects the nontraditional student. These three components include personal, professional and academic life. The article also talks about comparisons between traditional and non-traditional students. Giancola and his colleagues also talk about the coping skills that nontraditional students train themselves to handle and how each student has their own way of handling stress. The article ends by explaining that ...... in the middle of the article ...... the work context, personal and social, can promote or hinder their learning” (247). This statement is true because if these activities continue to interfere with a student's learning, the student will become stressed, which could cause them to drop all of their college courses. If the student could just sit down and analyze the situation, life would be easier. For example, the student could reduce the number of courses they take each semester. Reducing the number of classes could mean more time spent with family rather than homework. When you think of a person whose life is filled with frustrating tasks and activities, remember a student's non-traditional schedule of completing school activities, working long hours, completing personal activities and trying to spend free time with family and friends in just one day..