Rationale: I know I don’t need to tell you that students are experiencing increasing levels of stress these
days. I read it in your forum posts and in your emails. While I can’t fix the stressors in your life, I can give
you the opportunity to apply course concepts to help yourselves. Thus, the rationale for Assignment 2 is
to have you reflect on what is contributing to your experience of stress on a daily basis (e.g., personal
stressors and the daily hassles that research suggests can add up and cumulatively contribute to poorer
health), and to develop concrete, evidence-based strategies to manage your stress levels. Take this
assignment as an opportunity to identify and target some of those key sources of stress in your life.
Step 1: Read the following sections from your course textbook (Chapter 11, pgs. 417-421, from Stress:
Reacting to Threat and Challenge through to the start of the High Cost of Stress) AND (Chapter 11, pgs.
426-427, Coping with Stress).
Step 2: Keep a log of all of your major activities (e.g., classes, work, sports/leisure activities,
commuting, meals, family care responsibilities, studying) for at least 3 and up to 5 days. It is best to
choose 3 to 5 days that are most reflective of your typical daily life. Create an Excel spreadsheet or a
table in Word with 5 columns. In the first column, write down all the major activities you engage in
from the start of your day to the end of your day. In the second column, next to each activity, note
whether it is a commitment (e.g., your job, going to school, caring for family), upkeep (e.g., eating,
sleeping, showering, cleaning, cooking), or leisure (e.g., things you choose to do for fun or relaxation). In
the third column, note approximately how much time you spent on each activity each day. In the fourth
column, next to each activity, also label it as a personal stressor, daily hassle or neither a stressor, nor a
hassle. Finally, in the 5th column, assign it a subjective ranking based on whether you feel it is causing
you low, medium, or high levels of stress. You will be graded on the completeness and conciseness of
your log. You must attach it as an Appendix at the end of your assignment, so be sure that it is clear,
with the 5 labelled columns X 3 to 5 days of logs.
Step 3: Review your activity log, focusing on what you spend your days doing (e.g., how much of your
day is spent on commitments vs. upkeep vs. leisure), the relative proportion of personal stressors vs.
daily hassles, as well as the subjective level of stress each activity generates for you. Summarize your
analysis of your activity logs AND highlight 2 issues you see and wish to work on. For example, perhaps
you notice that you are spending too much, or too little time on certain activities, or that there is an
imbalance between your commitments, upkeep, and leisure activities, or that there are specific
activities that cause you to experience a lot of stress. There are many possibilities here and it will be
different for everyone, but it’s important that you summarize your overall activity log, and clearly
highlight and explain 2 issues that you see from summarizing your logs. This section should be no more
than 2 paragraphs.
Step 4: Based on your summary in Step 3 and using ONLY material from the specified sections of
Chapter 11 of the textbook on Stress and Coping, discuss how you cope with stressors in your life.
Specifically, do you tend to use emotion, problem-focused, or avoidant coping or some combination of
those? You cannot discuss defense mechanisms, as these are largely unconscious. You must offer
2
examples from your daily logs to support your responses here. For example, if someone copes by
drinking a bottle of wine at the end of the day, or playing video games for 6 hours, that could be
classified as avoidant coping. This section should be no more than 2 paragraphs.
Step 5: Finally, reflecting on your stressors and your approaches to coping with those stressors, discuss 2
specific ways you will improve upon your approaches to coping with the identified issues in the future.
Your plan must include 2 different strategies that are explicitly connected to the 2 issues you noted in
Step 3 and the typical coping strategies you noted in Step 4. E.g., you may want to work on problem-
focused coping approaches likes starting a study group or meeting with your TA to review course
material. E.g., perhaps you want to improve upon your emotion-focused coping by building more social
connections, spending more time in nature or in meditation, or cultivating optimism. Each of you will
come up with different ideas because each of you has a unique life with unique sources of stress. The
key to success is making clear connections between the issues you identified in Step 3, the coping
strategies you identified in Step 4, and course concepts from the specified pages of your textbook.
Make those connections explicit and explain why you think these changes to your coping strategies
will be beneficial to you. Be realistic. For many people, school or their job is a huge source of stress, but
you can’t simply quit school or your job. Choose strategies that you could realistically implement in your
life. Your plan should be no more than 2 paragraphs.
Assignment Format
This assignment must be completed independently, not in pairs or groups. Your assignment
must be written in complete sentences, with proper paragraphs. Do NOT include an introduction or
conclusion. Rather, jump right in with your summary from Step 3. Your assignment must NOT EXCEED
3 double-spaced, typed pages in 12-point font with 1-inch margins all around. This is a firm maximum.
The TA’s will not grade any material that exceeds that. The page limit DOES NOT include your title page,
references page, or your activity log, which you will include as an Appendix after the references page.
Your assignment must be written in APA 7th ed. format. This means an APA 7th ed. title page, three APA
format headings (one for your summary of the activity log, one for your coping strategies, and one for
your plans to improve those coping strategies), page #’s, in-text citations of the textbook, a references
page for the textbook, and your Appendix of your activity logs. You must NOT use direct quotes. You
must paraphrase and cite the text appropriately for key terms.
** APA 7th Edition Guide (this website includes an APA sample student paper, which you can use as a
template/guide to ensure that you receive full marks on APA format)
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/genera
