Stress in College
Most students in U.S. Colleges are just plain stressed out, from everyday worries about grades and relationships to darker thoughts of suicide, according to a poll of undergraduates from coast to coast. The survey was conducted for the Associated Press and MTVU, a television network available at many colleges and universities.
Students' Stress Problem
Four in 10 students say they endure stress often. Nearly one in five say they feel it all or most of the time. But most are bearing it. Nearly 60% in the survey say they enjoy life.
The majority cite classic stress symptoms including trouble concentrating, sleeping and finding motivation. Most say they have also been disturbed, worried, too tired to work. "Everything is being piled on at once," said Christ Curran, a junior at the Albany College of Pharmacy（制药) in Albany, N. Y. He said he has learned to cope better since starting school. "You just get really disturbed and anxious. Then you start procrastinating（拖延）, and it all piles up." Many cite eating problems and say they have felt lonely, depressed, like they are failures. Substantial numbers are even concerned about spring break, chiefly not having enough money or being in good physical shape.
More then a quarter of the students sometimes think they should cut down on drinking or going out. A third say they sometimes want to use drugs or alcohol to relax. About 15% say they're at least somewhat concerned about drinking too much on spring break. One in five say they have felt too stressed to do schoolwork or be with friends. About the same number say things have been so bad in the past three months that they have seriously considered dropping out of school. Darker still, about one in six say they have friends who in the past year have discussed committing suicide, and about one in 10 say they have seriously considered it themselves. Friends have actually tried to end their lives in that time, one in 10 say. In this ocean of campus anxiety, 13% say they have been diagnosed with a mental health condition such as depression or an anxiety disorder.
Of that group, two-thirds say they always or usually follow their treatment, one-tenth say they have been unable to stick to it, and the rest are not on a plan the perils（危险）of halting treatment were highlighted last month when police said the girlfriend of Steven Kazmierczak, who fatally shot five people and then himself at Northern Illinois University, told them he had stopped taking medication. Six in 10 in the survey say they are usually hopeful and enjoy life. Half even concede they feel understood by their families.
What Causes the Stress Problem
Even so, the survey shows plenty of sources of stress, led by the seven in 10 students who attribute it to school work and grades. Financial problems are close behind, while relationships and dating, family problems and extracurricular activities all are named by half as adding pressure.
College women have a more stressful existence than men, with 45% of females and 34% of males saying they face pressure often. The youngest students cite frequent stress most often. Whites report more stress than blacks and Hispanics. From schoolwork to dating, women are more possible than men to say they experience pressure from virtually every potential source of distress in the survey. Six in 10 women and just four in 10 men say family issues cause problems, though the differences between the sexes in most areas are slimmer. Besides balancing her approaching graduation with the 20-hour-per-week job that helps finance school, Jeanette Devereaux-Weber said she has a new pressure: beginning her post-college life. She has not decided what to do. "It doesn't feel like looking for a summer job anymore, it's looking for a career, it's things that will shape everything to come," she said. "Sometimes it feels like you have to make the right choice right away or you will be behind everyone else."
How to Solve the Stress Problem
The poll shows a spotty sense among students of how to find assistance handling pressure. Just over half say they are sure whom they would turn to for help. Only one in seven say they were very familiar with the counseling offered at their schools. Overall, 26% of students say they have considered talking to a counselor or getting other professional help. Just 15% say they have actually done so. Professional help, though, is not a top students' list when they need help. Three-quarters say they would be most likely to turn to friends; nearly two-thirds cite their parents and half say they would talk to brothers or sisters. Only one in five says they would seek out school counselors.
Of the 9% who said they had considered suicide in the past year, only half said they had considered talking to a counselor or professional and four in 10 had actually received such help. While 11% said they had friends who had tried committing suicide in the past year, that doesn't mean there have been that many attempts because many people often know each individual who has tried. According to the most recent figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, far less than one of every 100 people aged 18 to 24 tried to injure himself in 2006. However, the number is less than one of every 1000 people of that age in 2005.
How is the Survey Conducted?
The survey was conducted by Edison Media Research form Feb. 28-March 6 by having 2,253 undergraduate students fill out confidential forms. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. The students, aged 18-24, were handed the questionnaires at 40 randomly chosen four-year schools around the country. To protect privacy, the schools where the poll was conducted are not being identified and the students who responded were not asked for their names. Those mentioned in this story were not among those polled and did not necessarily attend schools involved in the survey.
MTVU's sponsorship or the poll is related to its work on "Half of Us", which it runs with the Jed Foundation, a non-profit group that works to reduce suicide among young people. "Half of Us" is a program designed to raise awareness about emotional problems faced by college students.
One of the organizers for this survey is MTVU, which is ______________.
The students who respond to the survey are aged at _________________.
The schools where the poll was conducted are not being identified in order to ___ ___________.
The program designed to raise awareness about students' emotional problem is called ______.
It is hard to track the blue whale, the ocean’s largest creature, which has almost been killed off by commercial whaling and is now listed as an endangered species. Attaching radio devices to it is difficult, and visual sightings are too unreliable to give real insight into its behavior.
So biologists were delighted early this year when, with the help of the Navy, they were able to track a particular blue whale for 43 days, monitoring its sounds. This was possible because of the Navy’s formerly top-secret system of underwater listening devices spanning the oceans.
Tracking whales is but one example of an exciting new world just opening to civilian scientists after the cold war as the Navy starts to share and partly uncover its global network of underwater listening system built over the decades to track the ships of potential enemies.
Earth scientists announced at a news conference recently that they had used the system for closely monitoring a deep-sea volcanic eruption (爆发) for the first time and that they plan similar studies.
Other scientists have proposed to use the network for tracking ocean currents and measuring changes in ocean and global temperatures.
The speed of sound in water is roughly one mile a second—slower than through land but faster than through air. What is most important, different layers of ocean water can act as channels for sounds, focusing them in the same way a stethoscope (听诊器) does when it carries faint noises from a patient’s chest to a doctor’s ear. This focusing is the main reason that even relatively weak sounds in the ocean, especially low-frequency ones, can often travel thousands of miles.
The passage is chiefly about ________.
In recent years, Israeli consumers have grown more demanding as they’ve become wealthier and more worldly-wise. Foreign travel is a national passion; this summer alone, one in 10 citizens will go abroad. Exposed to higher standards of service elsewhere, Israelis are returning home expecting the same. American firms have also begun arriving in large numbers. Chains such as KFC, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut are setting a new standard of customer service, using strict employee training and constant monitoring to ensure the friendliness of frontline staff. Even the American habit of telling departing customers to “Have a nice day” has caught on all over Israel. “Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Let’s be nicer,’” says Itsik Cohen, director of a consulting firm. “Nothing happens without competition.”
Privatization, or the threat of it, is a motivation as well. Monopolies (垄断者) that until recently have been free to take their customers for granted now fear what Michael Perry, a marketing professor, calls “the revengeful (报复的) consumer.” When the government opened up competition with Bezaq, the phone company, its international branch lost 40% of its market share, even while offering competitive rates. Says Perry, “People wanted revenge for all the years of bad service.” The electric company, whose monopoly may be short-lived, has suddenly mopped requiring users to wait half a day for a repairman. Now, appointments are scheduled to the half-hour. The graceless El Al Airlines, which is already at auction (拍卖), has retrained its employees to emphasize service and is boasting about the results in an ad campaign with the slogan, “You can feel the change in the air.” For the first time, praise outnumbers complaints on customer survey sheets.
It may be inferred from the passage that （）.
If she had not become a Japanese citizen, ____________________________(冠军属于) China.
Many overweight people can bring down their blood pressure just by ____ _________________________________________________(减轻体重) 10 to 20 pounds.
By the end of the 15th century what had developed into being was a modified, _______ ___________________________________________________ (大大丰富了的英语).
Young as he is , the child has developed the ability to look at things __ _______________________________________________________(从成人的角度).
The history professor has spent most of his time in icy Alaska, where the Eskimos still ______________________________________________________________(坚持传统习俗)
One of the most famous monuments(纪念碑) in the world, the Statue(雕像) of Liberty, was presented to the United States of America in the nineteenth century by the people of France. The great statue, which was designed by the sculptor(雕刻家) Auguste Bartholdi, took ten years to complete. The actual figure was made of copper supported by a metal framework(框架) which had been especially constructed by Eiffel. Before it could be transported to the United States, a site had to be found for it and a pedestal(底座) had to be built. The site chosen was an island at the entrance of New York Harbour. By 1884, a statue which was 151 feet tall had been erected in Paris. The following year, it was taken to pieces and sent to America. By the end of October 1886, the statue had been put together again and it was officially presented to the American people by Bartholdi. Ever since then, the great monument has been a symbol of liberty for the millions of people who have passed through New York Harbour to make their homes in America.