SEX & HEALTH
DON’T HYPE
Kylie Duncan, second from bottom left, with Bella Voce ensemble. Photo by Ben Siegel.
THE HUSTLE
High-achieving students at OU sacrifice self-care in order to be productive.
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BY HELEN WIDMAN | PHOTOS BY MAYA MEADE AND BEN SIEGEL | DESIGN BY KATE RECTOR
roductivity as a concept means something different for everyone. One person’s idea of productivity might be completing a 9-to-5 workday, cooking dinner and running errands until it’s time to do it all over again the next day. Another person’s idea of productivity might be exercising, taking a shower and completing a list of daily tasks they have. Sometimes productivity may even mean just getting out of bed one day. For Mo Bailey, a junior at Ohio University studying psychology with a pre-med track and biology minor, productivity is how she contributes to the different organizations she is a part of. This includes being an Office of Multicultural Success and Retention (OMSAR) Scholar, working in the Women’s Center, being an underclassmen representative for the Minority Association of Pre-Health Students (MAPS), being a LINKS Peer Mentor and occasionally conducting lab research. Bailey has found that studying in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) field has made it difficult for her to engage in self-care activities outside of her academic and volunteer work due to the constant pressure to be productive and busy. “Because of the work that people want to do and the culture that surrounds STEM, it’s very much a grind culture,” Bailey says. “And not only will your professors and professional people hold you accountable for the productivity that you produce, it’s also your peers. You’re not allowed to relax. It’s very competitive.
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backdrop | Spring 2022
The culture within STEM is competitive enough for everyone to want to be productive where it’s very, very toxic.” The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has shifted the way that certain work cultures operate and how students like Bailey currently view the idea of productivity. “I would say that productivity is now enforced even in our homes because we don’t have the luxury of saying that we’re at home or we can’t do work because now we can work from home or do virtual work. So it’s almost like work has infringed upon our own private areas, which I’m not a fan of,” Bailey says. One Forbes article offers the perspective that, “With performance management still trying to catch up to remote work, for those who do start to return to the office, there are still ingrained perceptions that a body in the chair for long hours means someone is busy and adding value — when, in fact, the opposite could be true.” In other words, working all day does not always equal a productive workday, especially when that work infiltrates personal lives, which can limit rest time as a result. Kylie Duncan, a junior at OU who is studying social work, is also treasurer for the Ambassadors to Survivor Advocacy Program (SAP), involved in Title IX acapella group and Bella Voce ensemble as well as a campus employee and OMSAR scholar. She is also a mother to a six-year-old son. Duncan finds that balancing her academic work and extracurriculars to be quite difficult and that the pandemic
