Causes Of Academic Anxiety Among Tertiary Institution Students
[A CASE STUDY OF ILORIN METROPOLIS OF KWARA STATE]

Fight and Flight Symptom
    These are physical symptoms that are related to the body’s normal fight-or-flight response. Whenever fear or excessive anxiety occurs in our life, it triggers the fight-or-flight response. This response says “I am in danger; I need to either run away or stay and fight”. The pituitary gland secretes and adrenalin into the system to enable our body to do this. The heart rate increases, breathing is affected. The body is prepared for the super human feat it is expected to perform.
    Unfortunately, when the fear or anxiety is internal there is nothing external to fight. There is nowhere to run to. We are caught with the internal physical response. These symptoms are sensitive to the “what its” fearful thinking that accompanies anxiety disorders.  With every1 fearful thought, the fight-or-flight response is triggered, adrenalin released, and physical symptoms occur with increases the fearful thoughts mere adrenalin released increased symptoms. This is the anxiety cycle involving fight-or-flight responses.
Tension symptoms
    These symptoms are related to our “tensing” up against an experience. The muscles are contracted and held for long periods of time. It is a reaction of trying to resist what is happening. It can also include holding our breath, tightening of the muscles, frowning, clenching of hands and teeth/jaw. It says “I do not like what is happening, I will resist to try and stop it happening”. A lot of the time we may actually be tensing our muscles but may not be aware of what we are doing. Sometimes we catch ourselves grinding our teeth or clenching our hands and we have not realized we have been doing it for quite a while. It is the same with tension of other muscle groups in our body. How many times during the day do we hold our breath as a way of resisting stress and anxiety?
Dissociation symptoms
    These symptoms are related to tracing and staring into space. Many students can dissociate very easily and may have been doing so since childhood. It relates to going into another state of consciousness. This causes a distortion in the sensory experiences such as seeing, hearing, feeling and others. General symptoms of anxiety are many and varied as some of them have been explained above.
Experience of Tertiary institution students on Needs
    At present, Nigerians regard the acquisition of tertiary education as a necessary condition for social mobility. As a result of this, admissions into the tertiary institutions have become highly competitive due to the fact that many want to acquire higher certificates. Despite the increase in number of students seeking admissions to higher institutions, the provision of infrastructural facilities have remained grossly inadequate, and this had led to student anxiety in higher institutions in Nigeria over the years (Yahaya, 2000). Adjustment needs and ways of cope with these academicians in the tertiary institutions have become a sort of problem to school administrators and the nation at large. Aminu (1981) reported that many tertiary institutions in Nigeria have inadequate facilities that are needed by their students when compared with their contemporaries in the developed world. In the past, this had led to student crises in academic environment. Also, unmet adjustment needs and poor resulted into deviant behaviours which are frequently exhibited on the campus (Yahaya, 2000).
    The study of students needs necessary thing in order to assist students in their academic, moral, social and psychological development. For students in tertiary institutions to be adequately educated in conformity with the societal norms and value, all their welfare needs should be adequately provided for, so that they would be able to fulfill their ambitions. In Nigeria, students from different social economic background attend schools. For instance, the institutions of higher learning comprise children from different socio-economic background, living in a new environment that is entirely different from their former learning areas or schools, which they were used to. Therefore, they need to be reoriented. Nwoye (1990) noted that the tertiary institutions students are expose to a lot of problems and frustrations which may lead to poor study habit, immorality and poor social interaction between the students and lecturers, students and their friends students and school management.