We all matter

In the weeks leading up to midterms and during the week of midterms itself, I found myself burdened with more than the small abyss of books and papers consuming my desk. Along with the mountain of work, I felt a knot in my stomach that wouldn’t go away. It was a sort of restlessness from wanting to do well but worrying that I would fall short of my aspirations.

What followed probably sounds familiar to many Princeton students — a vicious cycle of studying late into the night, collapsing into bed with work still left undone and then waking up early the next day to continue the process. Only after working until 4 a.m. in an otherwise abandoned Studio ’34 do you realize the unspeakable things hours of nonstop stress and consecutive French bread pizzas can do to a person.

In the past, when things were stressful, I turned to my friends and peers for support and a little TLC. This time, however, I found that they too were in a similar bind, barely dealing with their own problems without the added work of consoling me. In fact, my levels of stress often paled in comparison to their existential crises. In the last few weeks before fall break, it seemed everyone on campus was struggling with the Sisyphean task of midterms at Princeton — and what’s worse, many seemed to experience severe challenges to their mental and physical health.

While some might dismiss this as the age-old rite of passage for all college students, there are tangible costs to such intensity, as well as challenges in fulfilling the responsibility we all hold in working toward a healthier environment.

At first glance, the amount of palpable stress and anxiety that students experience on campus seems bizarre. After all, the University emphasizes its alphabet soup of support systems — even introducing the UMatter initiative this fall — conveniently made into acronyms for the sake of brevity. Should I need someone’s help, I can rely on a variety of people, including my RCA (residential college adviser), my PAA (peer academic adviser), my APAA (assistant peer academic adviser), my RGS (resident graduate student), my residential college DS (director of studies) and DSL (director of student life) and CPS (Counseling and Psychological Services). The choices are endless.

And to the University’s credit, during midterms week, many of these resources made themselves known: I received two emails from my director of studies, bags of candy and encouraging notes from my PAA and pizza from my RCA. Attempting to raise attention and create solidarity, Mathey College plastered its dining hall with quotes from students regarding their gravest insecurities on campus. My residential college, using a different approach, sent out reminders for “Massage Night,” free Fruity Yogurt bubble tea and the chance to make soaps and fragrance candles while also enjoying facial treatments and fresh smoothies. Simply by eyeing the horde of unread “Don’t Be Stressed!” emails in my inbox, I felt some inkling of stress. Yet the inconsistency here is quite alarming: how can we still be struggling so gravely with these issues, when the University seems to have so many resources available to handle them? As I munched on the bags of Smarties from one of the Christian fellowships, another campus group that left a midterms “emergency” package at my door, I wondered why this might be.

It’s no secret that many college students across the country struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts. This national epidemic has been widely discussed in the media in recent years, and for good reason. The statistics are extremely unsettling. According to Emory University’s “Emory Cares 4 U” initiative, suicide is the third-leading cause of mortality for people between 15 and 24 — with more than 1,000 suicides occurring on university campuses every year. In addition, the initiative reports that one in 10 college students has planned to commit suicide at least once.

Possible risk factors for suicide and depression are very common on college campuses, including difficulty adjusting to a new environment, coping with pressure and possible failure and feeling alienation and isolation. These risk factors, when combined with the ups and downs of adolescent years and the fact that mental illnesses like bipolar disorder often emerge in late teenage years, have proven a deadly concoction on college campuses.

Yet, considering the wealth of resources the Princeton administration dedicates to mental health, one would hope that this might not be the case. Princeton boasts an exuberant and loyal alumni base, and a casual onlooker might judge, simply by the onslaught of orange around campus, that students and faculty generally like the place.

Why, then, are we all so burdened with high levels of stress and anxiety? Are the University’s mental health resources doing nothing for our general psyche?

I would argue yes and no. The University has done many things right in its approach toward mental health — its UMatter initiative and free CPS counseling, to name a few. Yet many of these wellness programs are reactive — they respond to student malaise well after it has begun, without tackling the root of the issue. The fact of the matter is this: an institution like the University, which attracts top students from around the world, has a way of making incredibly talented and driven young people feel, though not less driven, quite untalented.

By the nature of its population of hardworking students, many of whom have excelled in their previous settings, the “falling short of expectations” that I mentioned earlier can have a devastating effect. As other writers of The Daily Princetonianhave touched upon, the nature of a difficult institution like the University only contributes to this disillusionment — not only in the realm of academia, but also in the competitiveness of extracurricular groups and even the difficulties of navigating the social scene on campus. With this reality, frequent bubble tea breaks, back massage sessions and other stress-relief programs — though well-intentioned and laudable — are only superficial solutions to the problem.

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Does this mean that the administration should inflate grades, or that clubs and teams should lower their barriers of entry? While part of me instinctively wishes “yes” — especially after that week of midterms — my more reasonable side wouldn’t go that far. After all, the rigor of an institution like the University may be one of its defining characteristics, and perhaps even a point of pride among students, alumni and faculty.

However, with the invariable rigor at the institutional level and with a dizzyingly talented student body, we must see that the stakes become extraordinarily high. We must acknowledge that there are absolute costs to mental health, and while we have done a lot, there’s a great deal more to do.

To start, the administration could encourage professors to spread midterms and papers across the last two or three weeks instead of unloading assessments in the last few days. And faculty involved in promoting mental health, like residential college administrators and CPS, might urge students to be more proactive about their health, rather than showing which resources are available when the going has already gotten rough. This, paired with simple tactics like encouraging students to keep perspective, can preemptively brace students for stormy times ahead. Finally, when students feel truly unwell, I would suggest the option of taking one semester off instead of the mandatory full year — the latter of which may only add feelings of isolation. (I acknowledge that the University currently resists this idea because it does not believe in graduations halfway through the year, but I think a compromise could be made.)

But our room for improvement extends far beyond the classrooms and administrative offices — the importance of a strong communal backbone can never be understated. In an academic environment like ours, where crammed library cubicles and hours alone in dorm rooms can feel incredibly isolating, it’s important to reach out to others; even a friendly “hello” to an acquaintance on the path can go a long way. Similarly, as the social scene plays a large role in student life, I think we could benefit from a community that’s less bent on exclusion and more based on openness and compassion. Only then can we — as an administration and as a student body — guarantee the health and well-being of our school as a whole.

With midterms in our rearview mirrors and hopefully happier times ahead, it will be easy to put off these topics for another day. But before long, when the days get shorter and the nights get colder, we will all, at some point, experience the heavy stress load that, to many, has become natural at the University.

To prevent that from happening, conversations like this are more important than ever, and we ought not to rest on our laurels. There’s never too much to be done in a situation like this, nor is it too soon to lay the support systems for the future. And while there may be no end in sight, we can continue to make good progress in the realm of mental health.

Paul Kigawa is a freshman from New York, N.Y. He can be reached atpkigawa@princeton.edu.