Apparently, it's not just academic staff who are constantly stressed. We only have to deal with management, government cuts and students.
Leicester University, keen to get a student's eye view of life at university, gave video cameras to 40 students and asked for five minutes of footage per week. The results suggested that exam stress, the rhythms of the academic year and various personal challenges contribute to stress.
I can sympathise. My undergraduate years were a mix of excitement and adventure (demonstrations, run-ins with the fuzz, student politics and journalism, bad housing, great - and terrible - lectures) and pressure (no girlfriend for the vast majority of my time, exams, looming joblessness and an inability to relax about anything). The actual academic content was too much fun to feel like work, and I hardly ever had to do an essay. It was fantastic to spend three years reading about books, then arguing about them.
But at least I'm not female: women students experience more stress than male ones. This can be beneficial: pressured female students gain slightly more first-class degrees, but too much stress leads to serious problems.
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