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Back-to-school stress? Here’s how it can be a good thing.

University of Rochester psychologist Jeremy Jamieson shows how reappraising stress can turn back-to-school jitters into performance fuel.

Sep 2, 2025

1 min

Jeremy Jamieson

As America heads back to school, the renewed whirlwind of expectations for students and parents — from demanding coursework to social dynamics and balancing pick-up-and-drop-off schedules — can trigger anxiety for students and parents alike.


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Jeremy Jamieson, associate professor of psychology who leads the University of Rochester’s Social Stress Lab, studies how social stressors affect decisions, emotion, and achievement and how embracing, rather than battling, those reactions can boost resilience.


“We’re not passive receivers of stress,” Jamieson told National Public Radio last year. “We’re active agents in actually making our own stress response.”


Jamieson’s research reveals that stress can be helpful when it is reframed as a mobilizer of energy and focus. In a study of students preparing for the GRE, for instance, those who were primed to view physical stress symptoms (like a racing heart) as beneficial outperformed their peers who didn’t reframe those symptoms.


As students confront the fall’s demands, a simple shift in mindset can make all the difference.


Jamieson’s research has so many practical applications that he is regularly sought out by media outlets on a wide variety of topics. In the last year, he has talked to Golf Digest about battling the “yips,” to The Atlantic about the rise of “anxiety-inducing” television, and to New York Magazine about the stress some people feel when talking on the phone.


He is available to discuss his research and to help explain and navigate seasonal pressures. Connect with him by clicking on his profile.



Connect with:
Jeremy Jamieson

Jeremy Jamieson

Professor of Psychology

Jeremy Jamieson is a national expert on stress, our responses to it, and how it's not always a bad thing.

Good StressSocial AnxietyPositive StressStress RegulationStress
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