Take a Breather

LDOC is a mere five days away, and T-Pain, Jeremih, MisterWives, and Spencer Brown await us after our last wave of work wraps up. Though different parts of the year lend themselves to different sorts of stress, reading period and Spring finals are some of the most jarring with the social high of LDOC and academic intensity of finals. MIT’s four suicides this year due to stress and mental health issues coming knocking the door to remind us that the way we manage our everyday stress is crucial to our emotional health and physical wellbeing.

First in the academic sphere, the pressure to put together a resume of solid grades and extracurricular accomplishments has only grown over the decades as the baseline for education moves higher into collegiate degrees and as the caliber of student rises. The higher the stakes, the greater the risks and pressures we feel to succeed and pull ahead of others. Yet even if you believe the workload we take on has not risen drastically in recent times, our perception and reactions of it certainly have. For example, in spite of our common struggle, there is still a certain restraint, often self-imposed, on crying for help or acknowledging a mental health issue that might get in the way of our drive to succeed. Particularly in a Duke culture that embodies “work hard, play hard.” Students place less importance than they should on self-care, preferring to grind through the work and just survive until the work lets up. Looking around, we see every Duke student busy at work or stealing moments to decompress. But what happens when these breaks of ours are no longer real mental breaks? Maybe exacerbating our stress the most is the increasing pace of life from all the technology we have on hand.

Compared to ten or fifteen years ago, students are much more constantly surrounded by information every minute of the day. During our breaks from work and obligations, we engage in social media where we are bombarded with updates on the lives of our newest and oldest friends and relatives. The snippets we get from others suggest that their lives are mostly highlight reels compared to ours. While we generally see through this selection bias, it can be easy to feel like others somehow have their act more together than you. When it is not social media, we have “breaking news” and drawn out news stories that we grow invested in and must continually fulfill our desire to stay up to date on. The 24/7 news and social media cycles taking the rejuvenation out of break time by making relaxation into non-work, where we continue to expend cognitive resources in other ways. We find ourselves jumping back and forth across different boundaries to keep up with others and the world while maintaining ourselves and our lives. Connected through our smartphones and other gadgets all the time, we are inundated with seemingly boundless information vying for our attention.

In looking back on these last few days or weeks for those really taking academic hits and towards the next few days and two weeks, take a deep breath and look around. You can afford a few minutes to unplug and eat your food slowly, despite the mistaken perception that you cannot. Put your phone on airplane mode for half-hour stretches once in a while. Triage your day’s priorities, and measure your energy and effort expenditures. Personal care, seen as an active process of maturely handling your priorities, is important. Challenge the college norms of late nights, caffeine dependencies, and constantly being plugged in.