Thursday, January 10, 2013
The happy mask: Carnegie Mellon must address stress culture
The Tartan Online: “I can't do this anymore,” my social, popular, and highly capable friend sobbed into my shoulder. It was the second week of the school year, and she'd just officially taken a semester leave of absence from Carnegie Mellon.
The stress was piling up. A bad breakup was enough, but to have to manage her course load on top of that was too much to consider. She'd considered suicide before the sudden clarity of deciding to take a semester off. I held her and told her everything would be all right, but frankly, I'd been feeling the gloom myself since arriving on campus two weeks prior. After a fantastic summer, even I had to admit I wasn't looking forward to another year.
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Now that I think about this, I do feel a lack of effort and conversation with this. Sure we all know that there is loads of work that has to get done, and slowing down the processes is not really an option. However I feel that being more vocal about things that can reduces stress would do wonders for this campus. While reading this article I also noticed the write keep referring to emotional stress and problems. But there are many different parts to human health other than Physical and Emotional health. Social, intellectual and spiritual health also have huge impacts on the way we behave and feel. I think the university should spend more time and resources on making ways to improve and help people in all five areas of health.
When this article was posted, it showed up on my Facebook newsfeed several times a day for the next week. Everyone heard about it, everyone re-posted it for their friends to see; that's because every CMU student who read it felt like someone was finally speaking up and discussing what seems to be burdening most if not all of us. It's true, we take some sort of strange pride in having too much work, overloading ourselves with classes and not getting enough sleep. It's partly because we are proud to be working this hard for an education that matters so much to us, and partly because if we don't joke or brag about it, we might just break down. I do agree with Katie Chironis that there should be a service in addition of CAPS; it could be composed of student volunteers on call who are there simply to talk. Because sometimes you just need someone to talk to and may not have that possibility, or maybe therapy scares you and a service that has less stigma attached to it would be a good solution. I also think the university should spread more awareness on this topic. At this point, there's no denying the problem is real; why else would this article have been so popular among students? It's the university's role to acknowledge this issue and take action, and even simply telling students that it's alright to struggle, that it's not something anyone should be ashamed of and that help IS available.
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