COMPOSITION AND GRAMMAR

SESSIONAL ONE(I)

SUBMITTED BY
MUQDAS NAZ
BSEE 015314
SUBMITTED TO
MADAM RUBINA SHAHEEN

21-NOV-2021
 Community College Pressure

For college students pressure from peers to socialize, parents to succeed in school, internal drive to get
good grades and speculation to get superior jobs in the market drive them in anxiety and even poor
performance.American Psychological Association defines anxiety as an emotion characterized by feeling of
tension and worried thoughts.Anxiety can be described as State anxiety and Trait anxiety,Trait anxiety is feeling
of nervousness that can be attributed to person’s personality characteristics (Splienberger ,1983).Anxiety can be
brought by an experience of pressure such as pressure college students face to do well in exam ,this type of
anxiety is associated with autonomic nervous system (viljoen,claassen and Mare,2013 )
.
High pressure to get to grips with college students not only influences their accomplishment but also has an
insalubrious affect on their mental and physical health.As pressure affects their achievements they start to lose
self assurance , find themselves to do nothing and are stereotyped.Stereotype threat is when someone has a
negative belief about himself and he is worried that he will confirm this negative stereotype about himself or
own group(steele & Aronson,1995).

Students comes to terms with firstly peer pressure that is to do what others are doing it is direct or indirect
influence on people of peer,members of social groups with similar interests,experience or social status.Secondly
student may face economical pressure due to having financially weak background.They may face parental
pressure to perform excel in studies and all these pressures lead them to lose their self confidence and to
underestimate themselves.

If a task begins with negative thought and defeatist belief the chances of incompletion and failure increases
upto high . If participants begin an experiment thinking that they are going to fail,they are most likely to
perform poorly(Chung,B.G,Ehrhart,M.G,K.H,Hattrup, Solamon&J.,2005). Pressure highly affects the memory
of students especially to those with high trait anxiety.According to American Psychological Association “latest
stress in America report 87% of the students report that their education is a significant source of stress.Anxiety
is most common cause of mental illness in United State with onset occurring between the ages of 18 to 22 years
old (Andrews & Wilding ,2004).Globally ,24 to 34% of college students experience depressive symptoms(Lie
X-Y,Xiao L-M,Liu Y-N,Liu Y-M,2016)

According to UNESCO “Education And Literacy in Pakistan” report 2019 Pakistan is one of the youngest
countries of the world ,with almost 30% population between 15 to 29 years of age. Over the last 20 years ,the
trend of enrollment in higher education institutes has increased substantially 10 to 15 % of the eligible age
group of 18 to 24 years in universities or professional colleges (HEC Annual Report 2013-2014).With almost
non existence of career counseling and mental health services at campuses,university or professional college
students in Pakistan battle with a highly competitive environment, financial constraints, future uncertainty and
parental and social demand to be excel in studies and secure a reputed jobs.All these stressors put college
students at high risk of developing common mental health problems specifically anxiety and depression.
 PubMed ,Web of Science ,Psycinfo and google scholars were searched between 15 to 30 January 2020 in
order to analyse prevalence of depressive symptoms among Pakistani professional college students.In total
there were 26 studies conducted including 7,652 students ,overall prevalence of depressive symptoms was
42.66%.The cross sectional study was conducted at Peshawar Medical College from August 2015 to May
2016.The mean age of 1334 subjects was about 18.9 years 13.6 % of subjects had psychological
distress ,35.4% students had somatic symptoms, 42% had anxiety or insomnia and 24.2 had depressive
symptoms.For a developing country young generation is an utmost assets and the whole nation entirely
depends upon the youth ,the data is enough to make sense that in which direction our youth is going

Yerk Dodson Law 1998 has been used to study the relationship between anxiety and performance.
In concordance with Yersek Dodson Law,an individual’s performance level will follow a standard bell curve in
relation with amount of pressure .Therefore performance in a difficult task is low with slight amount of
pressure,high with intermediate amount of pressure and low with high amount of pressure.Here arises the
concept of Optimal pressure ,Processing Efficiency Theory states that the more pressure a participant
experiences the more effort he will exert to perform well up to an optimal amount of pressure(Eysenck
Calvo,1992). .Pressure above optimal level has an obnoxious affect on all participant memory performance.

Citations

Andrews, B. and Wilding, J. M. (2004). The relation of depression and anxiety to life-stress
Spielberger C.D. (1983) Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Form Y).

Chung, B. G., Ehrhart, M. G., Ehrhart, K. H., Hattrup, K. & Solamon, J. (2005). A new vision of stereotype
threat: Testing its effects in a field setting Academy of
Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 1-6.
doi: 10.5465/AMBPP.2005.18778670

Cassady, J. C. and Johnson, R. E. (2002). Cognitive Test Anxiety and Academie

Performance. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 27, 270-295.
doi: 10.1006/ceps.2001.1094

Eysenck, M. W. (2013). The impact of anxiety on cognitive performance. In S. Kreitler (Ed.) Cognition and
motivations: Forging an interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 96-108). New York, NY US: Cambridge University
Press.
Eysenck, M. W. & Calvo, M. G. (1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing
19°C A

Gul F, Yuefen W, Ullah I, Zada S. Study of depression in university students in Pakistan. J Pak Med Assoc.
2020 Apr;70(4):650-654. doi: 10.5455/JPMA.15757. PMID: 32296209
: UNDP. Pakistan National Human Development Report Unleashing the Potential of a Young Pakistan [Online].
(2017). Available online at: https://www.undp.org/content/dam/pakistan/docs/HDR/PK-NHDR.pdf (accessed
Feb 15 2020).

Higher Education Commission. HEC Annual report 2013-14. (2015).

Akhtar P, Ma L, Waqas A, Naveed S, Li Y, Rahman A, et al. Prevalence of depression among university

students in low and middle income countries (LMICs): a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Affect Disord.
(2020) 274:911–9. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2020.03.183

Mokdad AH, Forouzanfar MH, Daoud F, Mokdad AA, El Bcheraoui C, Moradi-Lakeh M, et al. Global burden of
diseases, injuries, and risk factors for young people's health during 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the
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