Viewpoint: Study, Sleep, Work, Repeat.

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Ellie Brown, Viewpoint Reporter

Wake up and Shower? No time. Eat breakfast? Maybe. Run out the door. Go to class. Hit the gym? You don’t really want to but you’ll feel guilty if you don’t. Go home. Eat a quick dinner. Go to the library. Spend the next five hours studying. Head home. Netflix? You shouldn’t but you need to unwind. Sleep. Wake up. Start over. Repeat.

Does this sound familiar? For some people, this routine has been the norm since high school. If that doesn’t sound daunting, add obligations and meetings for clubs, organizations, work, internships…and the list goes on.

For many students, this is what the education system has become to them. It’s an endless stream of tasks and tests that fill up their weekdays, impede their sleep cycles, and cause unnecessary stress on a daily basis. In fact, according to the National College Health Assessment, in the spring of 2013, “almost half (46.3%) of all undergraduate students surveyed felt trauma or overwhelmed in regard to their academic responsibilities. Almost half of students surveyed reported they have more than average or extreme stress.” That is a scary number.

It’s my opinion that education is an amazing opportunity in our country. It inspires students to realize their potential and become informed citizens. However, it also seems like students become cogs in the machine, an endless supply of standardized test takers that must prove they’re at a certain pre-decided level of intellect.

In colleges and universities, students take on massive amounts of debt and extreme stress just for the possibility of a competitive edge in the job field. They’re expected to do hours upon hours of homework each night, take multiple, extremely hard tests almost during the same time, and somehow translate this to the real world after they graduate. How is this effective?

Despite all of this, students still flock to colleges around the nation every year. Oftentimes, the stress catches up to them so they resort to other methods of coping. Intense studying and working during the week only to fuel their weekends with binge drinking and partying. I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but when it becomes the primary coping mechanism or behavior, I think that’s reflective of something problematic in the education system.

There needs to be a change in the way that school is both taught and viewed. It has been guided by the same practice for centuries, despite the fact that nearly every other factor of human lifestyle has changed. Students are running themselves ragged and ignoring health and wellness as a result of our current education values and it’s just not healthy.

Programming students to regurgitate facts and lessons does not teach them to think critically or creatively. Expecting them to write papers in one week while they’re reading hours-worth of other texts every night only causes them to sacrifice sleep. Perhaps the U.S. continues this way because it’s the only way it knows how. But as a country, we don’t even rank in the top ten among best education systems.

Our students are suffering; we need to fix this. The only questions remaining are how do we fix it, and if we can somehow figure that out, are we willing to make the change?

 

The voice of the campus community is printed here by The Racquet.