With summer drawing quickly to a close and the school year starting up, students will start to find more and more reasons to maintain a negative attitude. Soon many of us will be piled up with tests, quizzes and projects and soon will be struggling to maintain a optimistic perspective. That’s the wrong approach. We should instead strive to start the school year with a positive attitude and maintain that attitude (or at least try to) throughout the entire year.

According to a study conducted at the University of North Carolina, negative thoughts and feelings can lead the brain to resort to a survival instinct in which it narrows and focuses thoughts down to the simplest form possible. However, the study goes on to point out that in most situations, this does not lead to a good outcome, as most situations really require a broader view in order to assess them properly. Therefore, with a more negative mindset, it becomes far more difficult to tackle schoolwork, lowering the grades of the student and deteriorating the mental health of the student. The benefits of staying positive are hugely influential on the life of a student.

However, it is obvious that students can’t simply snap their fingers and suddenly have a new positive attitude. Keeping your attitude positive does take some work and care, but in the long run, it is worth every bit of it.

A strategy for maintaining a positive attitude is to find events and school-related activities to look forward to when school gets tough. A couple of events any student can look forward to include Homecoming Week, football and basketball games, seeing friends on the first day, Prom and even Graduation.

It is even more helpful to find certain clubs or extracurriculars you find interesting that meet consistently throughout the school year. That way you always have something to look forward to no matter what point you’re at in the school year. Even if you can’t find a club that you enjoy, there is always an option of creating a new club. Either way, extracurriculars with regularly scheduled, fun meetings give students something to look forward through throughout the entire school year, helping them keep an optimistic outlook on life.

However, as good students we can’t exactly run from our responsibilities. This is where students and teachers both have to come in and work together to cultivate a more positive atmosphere. For students, that means being kind and encouraging to classmates, making others feel welcomed and included and respecting one another as well as the teacher. This may seem like common sense, but for the teachers, the job is a little more difficult. As teachers, they do control a large portion of what stresses students out and causes their attitudes to turn more negative: quizzes, tests, homework, projects and studying. While it is obvious that these cannot be completely eliminated, teachers can help us to feel better prepared for them, eliminating some of the stress created in these situations. For instance, teachers should try to tell us due dates in advance so that we don’t have to rush and struggle to finish. Most importantly, teachers need to listen to students and respect their input. If school could encourage a more positive environment, it would lead to students having a better outlook on everything else in their lives. Students spend the majority of their time at school and a positive environment would only help them.

Stay positive. Your GPA, confidence and body will thank you for it.