Spreading awareness about Black women’s 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.

BY HELEN WIDMAN | PHOTOS BY MAYA MEADE AND BEN SIEGEL | DESIGN BY KATE RECTOR

Productivity 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. 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

has added even more stress to her schedule. For Duncan, the shift in going from online classes back to in-person classes and meetings has been overwhelming amidst the ever-changing health protocols.

“I found that a lot of professors are very strict in their ways and not understanding that we’re still in the pandemic. I think it’s been extremely stressful,” Duncan says.

A community-university program, Kids on Campus, provides children in rural areas with access to educational opportunities and more. Although Duncan has not utilized the program, it can be a helpful resource for those balancing parenthood and school.

Duncan’s fiancé watches their son during the hours that she is in class and works at night, which means her day does not end when she steps off campus.

“He just works and then [in the] evenings it’s typically just me that has to run and go everywhere,” Duncan says.

Besides the added responsibility of being a parent, Duncan also faces outside pressures academically as a full-time student.

“I am on a scholarship on campus, and so I constantly feel like I have to keep everything perfect at all times,” Duncan says. “And I have to keep a certain GPA at all times. I have to do so many credit hours and so many community service hours on top of everything and a lot of those things aren’t offered within my schedule. And so, it just really — it’s a lot of pressure.”

In addition to academic pressure to succeed, some students such as Bailey find that other outside pressures also exist.

“I think especially myself, being a Black woman in general, I know that I have to work 10 times harder than everyone else just to be taken seriously. So, I’m not the type of person who can you know, take a day off because it will reflect not only me, but everybody I represent in my entire community,” Bailey says.

Although students may feel like the idea of productivity is overwhelmingly present in all aspects of their lives, Bailey admires her peers for their work ethic and passion.

“I think productivity culture can be very positive when you’re around other people who are very passionate about what they’re doing because it gives you a lot of passion yourself and forces you to really look into the things that you want to do yourself,” Bailey says.

“And that’s something I’ve seen like even as a STEM major, although it’s very competitive and very toxic, there’s a lot of people and peers that I have that are doing amazing things and it makes me want to do amazing things and collaborate. I think if productivity culture is geared toward the right people, it can be a really great place to produce collaboration and innovation. But overall, I still think it can be quite negative,” she says.

On another more positive note, remote work has been beneficial for many adults already in the workforce.

Alison Moore, the Assistant Director of Peer Mentor Programs at OU, feels as though working from home has actually helped her become more productive and given her more time to prioritize her mental health. Moore is also a mother and has prior experience working from home.

“I think when I was younger, and I was starting out in higher [education] and I didn’t have any children, I really threw myself into my work,” Moore says. “I had worked from home previously, like many years prior, when I didn’t have kids and I found that I did not have a good work life balance because the work was always there at my home.”

Now, Moore says that it is much easier for her to be productive in her work at home because she faces less distractions that come with working in an in-person office setting. She can take short breaks or run her household as needed all while getting her work done, although sometimes outside of the 9-to-5 workday.

Moore has noticed some positives among the technological shift that the pandemic has brought on in regard to productivity. One of these positives is higher student attendance in Peer Mentor events; however, higher attendance does not always equal higher presence.

“There [is] a difference between like being present on [Microsoft] Teams and actually being engaged in dialogue,” she says.

As for the future, though, Moore is hopeful that the next generation of students and individuals entering the workforce will begin to understand the importance of mental health coinciding with productivity.

“I see this with your generation is that you all are prioritizing mental health; you are able to have a better work life balance,” Moore says.

Bailey shares similar feelings and thinks that setting boundaries early on in a college career is crucial to maintaining an academic and mental health balance.

“My advice would simply be to make sure that you’re setting boundaries with people who expect things from you because in college you’re going to have a lot of people who expect a lot of stuff from you, especially if you’re going to be involved in certain organizations and things like that, but never forget that you come first and your mental health comes first,” Bailey says. “And setting boundaries with people who probably understand the things that you’re going through is not a bad thing, and it will help you overall.”b