In celebration of Stress Less Laugh More week, the Jefferson Rotary Interact club held a exercise eighth period activity on Apr. 26. The club invited all students to come and relax by getting active. Though the Rotary Interact club usually works on service activities each week, the club decided to give back to the Jefferson community by participating in Stress Less Laugh More week. With APs and final approaching, attendees of the event participated in informal games of basketball in Gym 2 or spectated from the bleachers.

“We wanted to become part of and really contribute to the community with APs coming up. I knew Active Minds [Club] was holding a Stress Less Laugh More Week and they assigned Wednesdays as exercise day and we wanted to pitch into help,” senior Anoop Kalra said. “We came to the gym to have a bigger area to work out in, to exercise in, to bounce basketballs in, and so everyone’s having a good time.”

Jefferson students focused on their mental health the whole week with themed days such as pajama day and nutrition day. By taking advantage of the free period and getting active, Jefferson students could wind down as the end of the year approached.

“Doing exercise actually releases endorphins so it leads to happiness which can also reduce stress. Exercise can also act as an outlet for any stress you have,” sophomore Ramya Susarla said. “During the basketball season I feel as if I was less stressed out because I had the ability to – whenever I did have a test coming up – calm myself down. So I liked going to basketball practices or having a game or something to distract yourself from the stress.”

Jefferson students often feel stress because of the high standards they hold themselves to. Big exams, projects and grades give students a chance to either prove themselves or break under the pressure.

“TJ students feel as if they need to do the best on everything like on tests or quizzes. I feel like a lot of the mentality around TJ students that they can’t do anything wrong contributes to it,” Susarla said.

Even if the students can acknowledge the that they are overwhelmed with work or that they should not care so much about their grades, often times it is far more difficult to find an effective way to fix that kind of mentality. Through the exercise event, Rotary Interact hopes to alleviate some of their stress.

“I think people need to acknowledge that they need to try their best but at the same time do step back if they’re stressing too much and do some other activity like exercise,” Kalra said.