Midterms, finals, papers and projects: all of these can cause any amount of stress or depression for college students. For some, it can be mild and go away once the test or project is done. For others, it can act as a catalyst and snowball into something a little more extreme.

Chris Grant, one of the associate directors for the Counseling Center at the UW, said college students are at an age when their lives are full of transitions that can lead to stress or depression.

The academic environment is already stressful, Grant said, but factoring in the quarter system adds to it, because there is the constant transition of starting new classes, adjusting to new professors and making new friends and personal connections. These personal connections are important. Going from a high school to a university setting can cause some to become stressed or anxious, because, with a campus as large as the UW, students can easily feel disconnected from each other, he explained.

Sophomore Wynn Wynn can attest to this feeling of being disconnected.

“Even though I was a Running Start student, the initial shock of being a real college student and trying to fit in was really hard for me,” she said. “The UW is really big and I didn’t know very many people.”

Being a commuter also made the transition difficult for Wynn. She said that because she commutes, she doesn’t have as much access to the school’s resources as students who live on or close to campus. For example, she has never been able to attend a Center for Learning and Undergraduate Enrichment (CLUE) session, because bus schedules can’t accommodate her traveling needs.

Something that helped her deal with this, however, was being in a Freshman Interest Group (FIG) her first quarter here. Wynn said that since everybody in her FIG attended the same classes, it was easy for her to build a network from there. She also said that it was just nice to see a “big group of friendly faces” when she walked into her first lecture.

Though being a student is an important role, it is not the only role, Grant said. College students are faced with developing more intimate relationships, both romantic and platonic, leaving home for the first time and figuring out who they are in relation to their family and as their identity as a person. Grant said that these are many “difficult life tasks” for one individual to handle simultaneously and can be the cause of stress and anxiety for some, who are trying to maintain a balance between them.

Maintaining balance is important, because sometimes students put so much emphasis and focus on school that they tend to lose track of the other aspects of their lives. Junior Matt Dela Cruz learned that lesson firsthand. Dela Cruz’s grandfather recently passed away, and it caused him to become depressed. He said that it took him a while to get over the grief, because he rarely visited his grandfather due to his hectic schedule.

“His death definitely made me angry with myself, because of how I put seeing him on the back burner,” Dela Cruz said.

Grant, who has been working at the Counseling Center for seven years, once worked at Debusk Memorial Mental Health Center, a community mental health agency in Oregon that served the general population. However, most of her career has been working at colleges and universities.

“It’s a great population to work with,” she said.

Many students go up to the fourth floor of Schmitz Hall and enter the Counseling Center for anxiety, stress or because they are depressed and unable to cope with it as well as they wish. Others come in dealing with life issues such as the break-up of a relationship or the death of a loved one, Grant said.

To accommodate all of these students, the Counseling Center serves both undergraduate and graduate students. It offers both individual and couples counseling as well as group therapy, which she said works great for people working through relationship issues. They also offer biofeedback training, which involves developing the ability to self-regulate an aspect of the body’s functioning on a computer. The first five sessions at the Counseling Center are free and, after that, prices range from $20-50 per session depending on the type of counseling (individual, couples or group).

Wynn started going to the Counseling Center last year as a freshman because she was struggling with adjusting to college life and her relationship with her parents. Ever since coming to the UW, she said that her stress levels have “definitely increased” and admits it has “contributed to my moods as well.” She said that the reason she thinks it has such a big impact on her, as well as many other college students, is because she doesn’t always look at the big picture and puts so much emphasis on a single test grade.

“The thought process is usually ‘bad test equals bad grade, which equals bad GPA, which equals no major will accept me, which finally equals my life is over,’” Wynn said. “The bigger I make it seem, the more stressed out and depressed I get.”

Grant agrees that this is the mentality of many students and said they need to recognize this is a stressful time in their lives and they should go easy on themselves. She said perfectionists tend to struggle with this the most. They need to be able to say it is okay to not be perfect, they do have a lot of tasks to juggle and they just need to do their best.

After a few sessions, Wynn said that things improved for her and she became more assertive in how she lived her life. She said that speaking to an unbiased third party that is not a friend or family member could clue you in on things that you’ve never realized before. She said she recommends the Counseling Center for students seeking out help.

Dela Cruz, despite having to deal with his grandfather’s death, has never gone to the Counseling Center to seek help, although he knows that this resource is available to him. Over the years, he has learned how to balance his schoolwork with the rest of his life and he said that his stress and depression levels have gone down.

After being involved in “many activities on campus, on top of working almost 25 hours a week” his freshman year, Dela Cruz has cut down and has found activities on campus he enjoys. This has changed things for him for the better, he said.

Dela Cruz likes to listen to what he describes as “soft, happy music,” including show tunes and pop music. Walking around downtown also helps him.

For Wynn, the best way for her to deal with stress is to pick up a great book, one that isn’t required for a class. She said that it’s the best way for her to get away from the real world for a while and just let the book take her wherever it does. Doing that allows her mind to relax and figure things out on its own.

No matter what the method may be, students should know that there is more than one way to deal with these issues, and the Counseling Center is there for them to utilize whenever they need it, because that’s why they’re here.

“We’re here to serve students,” Grant said.

Reach reporter Samantha Pak at features@thedaily.washington.edu.