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Kathleen: Appraisal is kind of how we evaluate stress in a situation. It's kind of like when you evaluate a house almost, except we're not putting monetary value on it. It's actually we're putting how much stress it's causing.

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Kevin: Primary appraisal, it's kind of how we evaluate how much stress the situation adds to us, like the magnitude of it all.

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Olandria: Secondary is more how you respond to it or how you deal with it.

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Kathleen: Well, my health stresses me out a lot. I'm a two time cancer survivor, so I've had a lot of different stresses in my life since I was seven years old. I mean, I'm constantly worrying about what is this pain? Oh, how is this doctor's appointment going to affect my schedule, or how am I going to go to college when I have to be here for treatment four days out of the week? So it's a big stress. I can't control the situation that I'm in, but I can control how I deal with the situation, how I react to the situation.

Kevin: I tend to focus on secondary appraisal. I like to think positively and think about my ability, what's in my control and to handle in this situation. An example would be I recently proposed and got engaged. That was a great-- there was a lot of stressors involved with proposing, you know, saving money for a ring, asking my girlfriend's parents for her hand in marriage, traditions like that.

And it was tense. It was hard. And primary appraisal, it was a lot of stress, like nine out of 10 of stress in my life. But I knew it's something I wanted to do, and I could manage it if I focused on it, and it went well. [music playing]