With another new academic year starting up at UNC Wilmington this week, there are a lot of changes and new situations coming into play, especially for incoming freshmen. Leaving home and moving to a place that, for many, is distant from what is familiar is an exciting, unknown and sometimes scary experience. So, how do we deal with a stressful situation such as this?

Our bodies react very differently when we sense that we are in a new environment. We experience many physiological changes in response to excitement, nervousness and fear. We are all familiar with the feeling of our hearts racing and having butterflies in our stomachs. These feelings are a result of the “fight-or-flight” or acute stress response.

According to ScienceDaily, when we find ourselves in a new situation, our bodies are immediately working hard to decode the situation in order to determine if there is imminent danger or a possible threat to our survival. The brain sends signals to the body when we find ourselves in an unknown situation and adrenaline is released.

This is why we experience racing hearts and butterflies in our stomachs; Our brains are preparing our bodies in case we need to utilize our “flight” response by increasing our heart rate, ultimately increasing blood flow to our cells. This is a natural occurrence that, in our more primitive stage in evolution, was used almost daily.

Obviously, when you’re moving into your new dorm or going to your first class, you aren’t necessarily going to run away or punch the person next to you in the face. So, even though we don’t find ourselves coming face to face with a serious threat or a predator on the daily, a stressful situation like leaving home and coming to college can trigger our fight-or-flight response.

The brain relies on information that our senses pick up in order to determine what kind of response we should have in any given situation. For example, when you walk into a friend’s house or your new room here at UNCW, you suddenly become more in tune to a different smell. Evolutionarily speaking, picking up a different smell in an environment could be an indicator of danger, which would alert you to get out of that area.

However, according to the Oxford Journals, as soon as your brain has processed the situation and your new environment, and you realize there is no threat to your health, you become less in tune to the smell. This is called olfactory adaptation. Our sense of hearing is capable of doing the same thing, so don’t worry, you’ll get used to the humming of the AC unit and your noisy neighbors — or not.

This is not to say everyone adapts to college in the same exact way. People are beautifully unique, and some are better at adapting to change than others. Personality and other psychological factors play huge roles in the way people experience change mentally, physically and emotionally. Amidst all the change, the new academic year at UNCW is looking bright. Best of luck to you all, Seahawks!