As the semester comes to a close, the ACU Counseling Center is available to talk to students about any stresses building in their life, even those unrelated to schoolwork.
Steve Rowland, director of the Counseling Center, said the Center often gets more visitors as students’ stress levels go up toward the end of the semester.
Rowland said at the beginning of the semester, the caseload for the Counseling Center is light, but the number of students who visit the Center increases until the end of the semester. Rowland also said they usually experience an increase in visitors during October and right after Sing Song.
According to the American College Health Association, “stress is your physical, emotional, and mental response to change, regardless of whether the change is good or bad.” Sometimes stress in one area of a student’s life can lead to stress in another area. Jessica Nguyan, a counselor in the Counseling Center, said stress is an issue she discusses with a majority of the clients she sees.
“Each person is different, and stress is different in each person,” Nguyan said.
Rowland and Nguyan said the Counseling Center works with students individually to address specific stressors rather than providing basic standards for dealing with anxiety.
“The last thing we want to do is treat you like everyone else,” Rowland said.
The counseling offered depends on the way a student’s stress manifests itself. Nguyan said she works to locate where an individual’s biggest stressor is, then looks for coping mechanisms to handle the problem. She said when this happens, students often show quick improvement, even within one week.
The Counseling Center also works throughout the semester to reach out to students on campus. They set up a station in the McGlothlin Campus Center two to three times each semester to talk with students and will be there sometime next week to hand out bookmarks with suggestions on how to prepare for finals, Rowland said.
The Counseling Center is in the lower level of McKinzie Hall and is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. The phone number for the center is 674-2626.
