Chill Out

Chill

 

by Victoria Tattinger (& Maya Nauphal)

 

We’ve all experienced stress and so I am sure that you can all relate to this topic. We live surrounded by stress in our everyday lives. Whether it be an embarrassing situation that makes your palms sweat or your stomach tightening up for no apparent reason, here are a few tips on how to deal with stress:

1. SLEEP. Sleeping is a great way to rest your metabolism. Sleep deprivation affects your mind as well as your body. If you cannot cope with stress then the best is to sleep on it, as sleep regulates your nervous system. Force your mind to shut down. This may seem hard at times but counting sheep does work!

2. MOVE. Exercise is a great way to take your mind of things. Going for a run before an exam will not only make sure you get a good night sleep, but will also help you body secrete serotonin, a ‘feel-good’ hormone. 

 

3. TALK IT OUT. As stress is a topic we can all relate too, I’m sure you can easily find someone to share your worries with. If you can’t manage things by yourself, ask someone for advice or support. Although women are more known to chat their worries away - guys should give it a try too!

4. COOKIES AND MILK. Drown your sorrows in a midnight snack! This is by far my favourite one, as well as a personal tip I’d like to share with you! When you find it impossible to sleep, because your mind just wont shut down, a glass of warm milk truly helps!

5. Strive for EXCELLENCE not PERFECTION. No one is perfect so don’t waste your time trying to be. No one is meant to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders like Atlas did (Greek mythology). If you want to go far in life listen to others and learn from your mistakes. Stress is often related to fear of failure or disappointment. You are still young and you lack experience. So guess what, you are going to fail a couple of times in your life. ‘Carpe Diem’: don’t think of tomorrow as a better today, instead, try to improve life on a day to day basis.

6. LAUGH. A good laugh can be a great stress reliever: it releases endorphins and other healthy hormones, and can even provide some sort of a physical workout if you really get going.

 

7. SMILE☺ Apparently turning that frown upside down works for relieving stress. And for all you sceptics out there, it’s not the smile that counts but the reason behind it. Find someone who makes you smile, and stick to that person when you are on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

8. KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON”. You are living in England, so you might as well adopt the English moto (inherited from ‘Britain’s battle’). When you find yourself in a stressful situation, the worst reaction you could have is to panic. Just take a deep breath and the moment will pass.

Rise and Shine

Rise and shine?

by Maya Nauphal

 

Waking up early to go to school every morning: probably most challenging part of your day. Your alarm goes off, you press the snooze button repeatedly until you are late for class. No matter how much you know you should get up, your brain somehow negotiates you right back to sleep. And worst of all, once you’re up, all you can think about is how inviting your bed looks. Seems pretty hopeless doesn’t it?

Here are a couple of tips to get your morning started efficiently:

 

-       Set your alarm clock 5 to 10 minutes before you need to wake up – you will then have extra time to fight with your body to get out of bed.

-       Place your alarm clock away from your bed so that you will have to get up to turn it off. Use two alarms if necessary.

-       Do not listen to the voice inside your head, the one telling you that ‘a couple more minutes’ won’t make a difference. Those ‘couple of minutes’ will quickly turn into half an hour. The more you think about it, the less you will want to get up. Rather, make jumping out of bed a reflex.

-       Try to include bananas, eggs or yogurt in your breakfast. These foods contain tyrosine, an amino acid that helps ‘create’ dopamine and norepinephrine, your brain’s ‘wake up’ chemicals.

-       Drink a glass of ice-cold water as soon as you get up. The cold will shock your body into waking up.

-       Don’t have a cup of tea/coffee every morning. Studies have shown that your body gets accustomed to caffeine so the more you drink it, the less effective it becomes. Save the caffeine for really bad mornings.

If none of the above work, try finding someone to pull you out of bed on time.

 

An actual ‘highly’ important problem ? The nerve-racking weather .

An actual ‘highly’ important problem ? The nerve-racking weather .

Here comes the ‘rain’, toodle doo doo, or is it supposed to be ‘sun’? Honestly we must admit that the current weather, that shifts from blue skies and (proper) spring heat, to damp pavements and cold winds that make you wish you were back under the covers, from a day to another or within a few minutes, has been absolutely unbearable.

For my part, I’m not a fervent believer in global warming, and even though I’m sure most of you could find hundreds of scientifically proven arguments to make me see reason, I believe it to be part of the earth's natural cycle. But after freezing to death for the past weeks, as I persisted in dressing lightly in hope of a warmer tomorrow, I realised that perhaps global warming was much needed here. No one could argue that, our emission of greenhouses gases (C02 and Ch4) has had a highly positive impact on the environnement. It also seems that we will not be the only ones losing square feet, due to the average rise of housing in London, as some adorable polar bears (that aren’t as friendly as they look) will be joining us.

Another problem related to the uncontrollable weather, is clothing. I don’t usually plan what I will wear the morning to come, which explains my constant tardiness, as I never seem to find a matching pair of shoes; but a quick look out the window and I get the general weather forecast for the day. Though lately my predictions haven’t worked out. UGG’s when the rain starts pouring aren't the best option, neither are rubber rain boots when the sun is shining… Trust me, they are both equally disagreeable, especially when you make a hole with your toes through your ‘brand new’ pair of soft Brown UGG’s when the sheepskin stretches.

They are not water resistant, so why are they suitable beachwear according to the suntanned Australian models that parade in them?

So in conclusion, I am constantly either freezing or extremely warm, but I can’t seem to find the right balance. This is of course driving me utterly mad and I doubt I’m the only one. Plus, I can no longer stand the pastel and almost fluorescent summer clothes that invade all the shop windows I pass by, while my damp hair sticks quite unattractively to my face. They only make me wish that we were already enjoying the warm Granada depicted in Garcia Lorca’s poems.

If we look back over the school year, we can see we had a very enjoyable September, with warm days and lunch in the park (which was dreadfully filled at all times), a mild winter with little snow and sun filled days, and a very original April and May. While the month of April suggests ‘showers’, and May suggests spring weather, we got a drought in April and cannot follow this piece of advice: Ne'er cast a clout till May is out' (meaning cover yourself if your not looking for a near death freeze experience).

However, if you choose to adopt a more optimistic point of view, it seems the temperatures will be finally rising and the sun might be making extended appearances. Which also means not being able to go outside as often as you wish, with the upcoming exams that demand revision for those who recuperated from their weekends on Mondays or chatted away in class, informing everyone of whatever came into their absent minds.

Also, remember that if every season can be enjoyed so can the changing weather:

‘Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, and snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.’ ~John Ruskin

Victoria Taittinger (2nde)

Are we addicted to our mobile phones?

Are we addicted to our mobile phones?

 

In a very short few years, the way the whole world communicates has drastically changed. I know this is hardly news to anyone, after all you only have to look around when you’re in a public place and you’ll be surrounded by laptops and state-of-the-art electronic tablets, but most of all, by mobile phones. We can’t seem to escape them. I dare you to find one place people would never use their mobile. The loo? Think again. On many websites people boast about “spending hours on the toilet” to settle high scores on their favourite gaming app. In fact 40% of interrogated phone users in the UK (in a 2010 poll) admit to using their phone in the lavatory. And, let’s face it, we’ve all answered our phones in the most unlikely places.

There’s no question we need our mobile phones. Calling and texting people is inevitable in this era. But are they more than just a necessity in everyday life? Are we addicted?

It would be quite easy to limit this -hypothetical- psychological dependence on mobile phones to the younger generations but it doesn’t stop there. I think the worst ‘addictions’ I’ve seen are with smartphone users of any age (which is the equivalent of 43.8% of phone users in the UK).

Of course people can be very dependent on a basic mobile phone but it reaches a completely different level on a smartphone. On these phones you can access Internet wherever you go, play highly complex games with incredible graphics, have your mail updated every second, get all your social networking sites into one folder, play all your music, get directions and maps, take better pictures than some cameras could a few years ago, tune a guitar and find any song by humming, have a torch… sometimes we still even use them to call people. Let’s be honest, once you’ve got this phone that does absolutely everything in your hand how will you ever take it out?

As an experiment, I asked ten people I knew to go without their phone for a whole 24 hours. Every single person I asked categorically refused. Adults, because of their jobs. Teenagers, because of their friends. Even if you wanted to avoid using your phone as much as possible you wouldn’t be able to leave it behind… it goes everywhere with you and you become enslaved. So I decided to go without my own phone for 24 hours. Did I find it liberating? No. It was actually very stressful and that day was quite difficult to survive. First, I was annoyed I couldn’t text some friends and worried I might miss a call I would’ve liked to take. After that I started noticing I wanted to play mindless games on it to pass the time and automatically reached for it. I felt generally annoyed at everyone. As the day progressed I found I became more and more agitated, increasingly stressed and quite uneasy.

Now, some of you may laugh when I say this, but I was displaying mild to moderate withdrawal symptoms because I didn’t have my phone on me. Withdrawal symptoms are the sign of addiction. Ask a smoker not to smoke for 24 hours and you’ll see their stress increase, their irritability go through the roof and their craving for a cigarette skyrocket. Well, you shouldn’t have laughed, because I felt exactly the same way. So I can’t speak for all of you until you switch your phone off for24 hours but, as for myself, I am indeed a mobile phone addict: they say the first step is acceptance.

I’d love to be able to conclude with a solution to this problem I’ve encountered, a ten step guide to rehabilitation, but unfortunately I don’t have the ability to find a cure. However, I would say if you do find you may be addicted to your phone you should set yourselves a few rules. Here are my ten rules:

1) No phone at the dinner table (or lunch, or breakfast). Ever.

2) Don’t let it be the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you look at at night. Maybe set yourself a time past which you can’t look at it, and get out of bed and shower BEFORE you check your phone.

3) Don’t download too many time-wasting games. At the end of the day they waste hours of your day for no bigger achievement than a possible high score. Been there, done that: not worth it.

4) Do not look at your phone (or answer it!) in the loo. Amongst other things, it’s very unhygienic.

5) Try to stop checking it every five minutes and let your main focus become something else. Please.

6) Don’t use your phone for texting or gaming while you’re in the street. It shuts you out of the world and, chances are, you’ll walk into a lamppost or get hit by a truck.

7) If you’re having a conversation with friends, don’t text or play with your phone at the same time. (It’s just rude!)

8) Try not to let holding it in your hand become a reflex. Hold a pen if you need to hold an object. Or a pocket watch. You’ll think of something.

9) Keep it in your bag rather than in your pocket. (It radiates your pants off.)

10) Turn your phone OFF from time to time. Don’t just leave it on standby, turn it completely off. Even if it’s just at night.

I hope you found these tips helpful. I know they sound obvious but if you follow them you’ll have your addiction a little more under control, because you are, most likely, addicted. Your phone is more than just something that enables you to communicate; you have a clear dependency on it, especially if you have a smartphone. Don’t believe me? Turn your phone off for 24 hours.

… I thought so.

Juliette Latham (TES)