You have to be a little abnormal to go to grad school. While friends are blowing twenties at swanky bars in New York, grad students still eat like 18 year olds and save for a trip to the dentist.
Grad school is not healthy. I'm writing this at 8 a.m. after six hours of sleep and a breakfast I ate standing up. It's not likely I'll sleep more than six hours until Friday. I also plan to eat two frozen meals this week, during twin, 12-hour days.
And I'm one of the healthier grad students.
Last year, the The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that depression and anxiety were sky high in graduate students. Those interviewed for the article were told by advisers to simply work harder despite troubling symptoms.
There is a notion that grad students deserve to be unhealthy. Cartoons such as Piled Higher and Deeper (or Ph.D
of course) draw us with dark circles under our eyes, wrinkled clothes and bed head. Even the cartoon's subtitle, Life (or the lack thereof) in Academia is telling.
Some professors chuckle knowingly while watching us struggle through classes and papers. Exhaustion, stress and strain are celebrated as a rite of passage, rather than budding health concerns.
Surviving grad school takes a self-critical perfectionist, and academia tends to magnify these characteristics. Our professors are charged with teaching and advising, not diagnosis and treatment. And so they tell us to work harder. More often, they tell us nothing at all because we keep our woes to ourselves.
There are a lot of maybes. Maybe we'd share our problems with advisers if we felt they truly cared. Maybe our advisers can't express compassion because we don't confide in them enough. But as I watch my cohort dwindle, albeit slowly, I can't help but wonder if these departures are preventable.
There are good reasons for high academic standards and an argument to be made for higher ones. I have never learned as much as I will this year. The widespread acceptance of unhealthy habits in grad school, however, should not be par for the course. Patterns of fatigue, poor nutrition and high stress are health problems, not the normal results of education.
The solutions will not come from the institutional level while most of us are at OU. We must consider our education holistically. Grad school is a part or our lives, not the sole part. The only way to introduce this idea is changing the vocabulary we use to describe our lives. After all, it only takes one family tragedy to show how unimportant school is.
Academic advising shouldn't just be a discussion of coursework and thesis/dissertation topics. We owe our advisers a chance to help when the going gets tough. They owe us compassion without judgment and advice that will help us as adults, not just students. The only question is, who goes first?
I'm not suggesting we turn advising into therapy, only that we not be afraid to mention life outside of school. Advisers deserve the chance to know us as human beings, rather than the faceless revolving door of class after class. Let's give them that opportunity.
It's possible to explain all sorts of concerns in academic terms. We can share personal problems professionally by describing how personal problems affect our schoolwork. Good advisers will care. If nothing else, they worry about graduation rates. It's also hard to look an earnest, concerned person in the eye and not empathize. Share your struggles in person.
I refuse to embrace a system that encourages me to be unhealthy. If we don't take care of ourselves, it's possible no one else will.
Robin Donovan is a graduate student studying journalism and columnist for The Post. Send her your comments at rd253609@ohiou.edu. 4
Opinion
Robin Donovan
