Recently I've seen a few articles in my feed that are all telling people they can't complain about college stress if they don't XYZ. Frankly, I'm tired of it. College is stressful for everyone at some point. The last thing college students need is to be told their stress is invalid.
The most recent of these articles I saw said that students who didn't work while at school had no right to talk about how stressed they are. First of all, no. There are plenty of students who are the president of a club, athletes, or do any number of time-consuming things on and off campus, other than having a job. And honestly, if you're in a financial position that allows you to be a college student without needing to have a job, good for you. If not, I feel you, college is expensive, but that doesn't give you the right to tell other students they can't be stressed just because they don't have a job.
My other main issue with these articles is that they are based on the idea that you can compare stress. This is like when people get into arguments about who has a harder major or who goes to the harder school. Everything is relative. Everyone handles stress differently and everyone has different commitments and things they deal with in their lives. You can't look at a person and decide that you have more stress in your life just based on their major and employment.
We live in a society that constantly encourages competition. If you walk into an 8 a.m. class, you'll hear students comparing how little sleep they got, "I went to bed at 2 last night" "Oh yeah? Well, I left the library at 4" "I win, I haven't slept in two days". I don't know why this is the way the world is, but we need to stop making our stress a competition. All that does is romanticize the struggles college students go through while trying to balance academics, a social life, and mental health.
Instead of trying to prove you have the toughest workload or the hardest major, why don't we all take a step back and realize that even though our circumstances are different, we're all in the same boat. We're just trying to graduate with a degree that will help us get our dream jobs so we can find fulfilling careers. We don't have to tear each other apart in the process. So next time you're about to compare how many hours of homework you have, or how many cups of coffee you've had this week, try encouraging each other to take better care of yourselves. Talk about the great yoga class you want to take, not how you're dreading exam week. Focus on the amazing experiences you get to have in college, instead of competing overstress.
