What is stress? Stress is a part of day to day living. As a college student I experience stress meeting academic demands, adjusting to a different schedule every week, or developing relationships with others. The stress I or anyone else experience is not necessarily harmful; in fact, stress is a normal part of life. Although we tend to think of stress as caused by external events, events in themselves are not stressful. Rather, it is the way in which we interpret and react to those events that makes them stressful, and will either make us peak performers or not. People differ greatly in the type of events they interpret as stressful and the way in which they respond to suc