As I write this post, I realize that I have exactly an hour to pack, buy lunch, hand in all my assignments, and get to my team facility to leave for the airport. This past month every week I have been leaving on Wednesdays and Thursdays for athletic travel. It's here I realize that the combination of athletics and school are perfect examples of chronic stressors. For athletics there is practice everyday, lift, conditioning, film sessions, and extra activities to be done everyday. Now I'm aware that we sign ourselves up for this but it doesn't mean it isn't stressful. I love being an athlete and know an outsider looking in would love to have the opportunity, but the demanding schedule and lack of time for school work makes the everyday life filled with attention fatigue and physiological stress. 

The travel associated with your season is an example of a stressful stimulus. This past season especially we have had to take a plane everywhere we travel which is about 6 times. With every travel weekend, I know we need to leave on a Thursday sometimes even Wednesday in order to play games on Friday and Sunday. I know that I need to have all my work done before we leave for the weekend, it is our coach's expectations that we don't use our excuse forms to hand in assignments late due to being away. This semester  I am in 17 credits since I am a double major, so weeks when I need to get a whole week of work done in 3 days it can be extremely stressed. Trying to balance and plan out every free hour I have on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to cram every assignment, reading, or paper is exhausting. In short, before I even leave for the weekend, I am stressed planning out when I will fit everything in, stressed while doing the schoolwork because I am thinking about what I need to do next, and stressed while traveling because I think about the classes I am missing and wondering if I will be able to get the full curriculum by meeting for GSI hours. 

Another stressor is balancing the content and separating the two worlds of sports and school.  When your coach holds you to the standard of sports being your first priority yet yourself and your parents expect grades to come first because your future is more important, it can be tricky. Being able to be present in class and comprehend what is being taught can be very hard when you feel fatigue, lack of energy or distracted. Same as when you receive a bad grade on a exam, or you just broke up with your boyfriend, you need to learn how to block out the distractions and focus on the practice at hand. One of the ways I am able to successfully perform all these tasks is through cognitive maps and directed attention. Having a map for each of my classes allows me to build up what I learn each day and not have to rely on studying so much. While at practice I have a map of the drills we do, the skills I need to perform, and the certain set-plays for corners. This helps reduce the amount of directed attention required to function at practice properly and allows me to use more of my directed attention in class to pick-up what is being taught. I've learned from this class that the overuse of directed attention in your overall life, or due to minimum cognitive maps, can add to your stress load. In order for myself to perform my best in both worlds, I need to allow myself to take the breaks while studying when needed, or properly rehab after practice if sore, in order to prevent an overload of stress. 

College wouldn't be college if there wasn't any stress included. It's a time in your life when you push yourself to your limit and find out how much you really can handle. As you experience more, you begin to adapt and learn how to cope with the stress in everyday life. You begin to realize what places you preference when studying cause you know you get the most work done there, or where you will grab lunch to-go on certain days because it is in-between your two classes and there is usually never a line. It all becomes a cycle in a way that when you encounter stressors, you have a way to compact them because you have already dealt with the stress and directed attention fatigue before. I know myself of what I need to clear my head, build my cognitive maps, and when directed attention is necessary, it is all in the process of learning how to deal with stress.