Stress is a fact of life at university. If you’re not stressed out from time to time, then you’re not paying attention. But now, many universities report that stress has reached epidemic levels. Counselling services are overwhelmed with students who can’t cope. What to do? There’s no shortage of ideas. Offer yoga classes and pet therapy. Get the faculty to “redesign” (lighten) the courses. Provide more accommodation for weak students. Reschedule exams so they aren’t bunched up, and make sure students have lots of breaks between classes. How about late-night snack tables in the library at exam time?
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m extremely sympathetic to the issue of students’ mental health. The transition from adolescence to early adulthood can be really tough. Few students get through university without some encounter with depression, anxiety, panic, hysteria, anorexia, bulimia, loneliness, heartbreak, acute crises of identity or even suicidal thoughts. Some students are more fragile than others. It’s cruel to tell them to just suck it up.
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I would take Wente more seriously if she didn't cope with the stress of her job by plagiarizing.
ReplyDeleteNicely put (whoever put it; I'd forgotten why that name sounded familiar; now I remember Wente has been mentioned here before). I suspect many of the current generation of students will learn/develop resilience, but it may well be post-college.
ReplyDeleteI don't have college dreams (college wasn't really stressful; I was well-prepared, and really happy to have much more time to work on my own than in high school), but I do occasionally dream that I've forgotten to *teach* a class (something I've never done, even in my freeway-flyer days, though I've missed a few due to major traffic/car problems).
And then there's the one in which I forgot to finish high school, which started showing up soon after I defended my dissertation. That still shows up now and then.
I have the "forgot to finish high school" dream with regularity as well!
DeleteWow. I thought I was the only one who frequently has this nightmare! :)
DeleteWow. I thought I was the only one who frequently has this nightmare! :)
DeleteI hate it whenever I find myself agreeing with Margaret Wente, almost as much as I hate it whenever I find myself agreeing with Rick Santorum (about how college isn't for everyone, for example). Perhaps we might name a frothy substance after Margaret?
ReplyDeleteP.S. Thirty years after serving in the U.S. Navy, and I still get nuclear war dreams.
DeleteMargaret Wente's commentary about universities having recently expanded beyond putting down academics must be her way of doing penance for having recently been blasted for serial plagiarism.
ReplyDeleteWente's standard schtick is that anyone who complains on campus is a wuss. After all, it was all beer and skittles when she was a student, so how could anything be different now?
ReplyDelete