5 minute read
Is graduate school bad for your (mental) health?
IS GRADUATE SCHOOL BAD FOR YOUR (MENTAL) HEALTH?
The percentage of graduate students who experience moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety and depression is more than three times the general population average.
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WORDS BY Abigail Miller
PHOTOS BY Kamryn Rowe
Quietly working alone inside the basement of Kent State’s Science Research Building is Mitch Powers, a doctoral candidate in physics. It’s just past noon, but Powers has been in the lab since early morning working on the mundane task of moving a little bit of material from one end of a small tube to the other.
Currently in his sixth year of graduate studies, Powers knows better than most what being a graduate student can do to one’s mental health.
“Grad students generally are overworked, underpaid and if we don’t have a great relationship with our advisor, it’s easy for us to get overstressed about things,” he says. “Depression is a real thing and impostor syndrome [a psychological issue in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments] is a real thing.”
A report by Harvard University published last November found the widespread presence of depression and anxiety seen in doctoral students is comparable to the prevalence in incarcerated populations, with loneliness and isolation cited as major issues.
These feelings are often attributed to grad students’ independent projects that start after several years of class work, which includes a thesis for master’s students and a dissertation for doctoral students.
“So many of them, they’ve had maybe three, four, five years of coursework and a cohort with their fellow graduate students, and have built a really nice community with their colleagues there,” Director of Graduate Student Services, Kyle Reynolds, says. “But, then you start your dissertation and everyone is working on these independent projects. You don’t see your colleagues as much.”
On top of a thesis or dissertation, graduate students are commonly required to teach and conduct research. Students teaching courses are only compensated for the 20 hours they are required to work. This means that when students have to work overtime in order to get all of their research, teaching and coursework done, as they often do, they aren’t being paid.
“There’s kind of a disconnect between the work we do and the work we’re paid for,” Powers says. “I know grad students who are the instructor on record of two classes, if not more, at once and on top of that they have to do their own research, and I’m sure they have other small responsibilities on top of that. They’re doing the work of an adjunct professor – in some cases they’re even called adjunct professors – while still working on their dissertations and they’re getting paid, say, $14,000 a year.”
In addition to being paid below the poverty line, graduate students frequently feel that their work isn’t crucial to their department. In fact, Harvard found only 26 percent of students report thinking their work is useful always or most of the time.
“There’s a lot of faith on my part that this is all going to be worth it and work out,” Powers says. “A lot of it is it can take so long, and we spend so much time on the immediate problem we have at hand that it can very much feel like we’re rolling boulders up hills. It’s not even that they roll back down, it’s that there’s always another boulder to roll up another hill.”
To be a graduate student at any college campus is to worry about money. But to be a Kent State graduate student, one of the lowest paid graduate students in the state of Ohio, is to worry more than usual.
Graduate students today struggle more with their mental health than the average population due to feelings of unimportance, loneliness, significant underpayment and isolation.
At last year’s graduate student orientation, Tim Rose, a doctoral candidate in sociology, conducted a survey and found that the median income of students was less than their median expenditures. This means most graduate students aren’t making enough money to pay for their minimum expenses.
The widespread presence of depression and anxiety found in doctoral students is comparable to the prevalence found in incarcerated populations, with loneliness and isolation cited as major issues.
The recent findings from Rose’s survey caused Graduate Student Services to add a new phase to their graduate orientation that specializes in helping students navigate their financial issues.
“The top concern that we saw this year from our students was related to finances as a graduate student,” Reynolds says. “Our team put together a new session about graduate student finances, and identified places in the community and on campus where students can save money and if they have financial setbacks.”
Not only has Graduate Student Services adjusted their programs because of worsening mental health concerns, but so has the Graduate Student Senate. During the spring of 2018, the GSS proposed the creation of a sub-committee focused on health and wellness. The new committee is led by Carolyn Good, a graduate student working toward a masters in health education and promotion, and includes a small group of eight members.
“I’m not a senator,” Good says, “but they proposed the idea of the sub-committee because they realized that there was such a need for it, and I volunteered to lead it because, at the time, I had the most experience in the health education field in the Graduate Student Senate who was willing to do so.”
Due to the amount of preparation last semester, the committee is just now planning their first events. This semester, their focus was on hosting a nutrition event in late March right before spring break as well as a few self-care days during the first week of May. Tasks which most people would consider ordinary, like cooking dinner and taking time to relax, typically aren’t prioritized by graduate students because they’re often busy with work.
From engaging in healthy eating to orchestrating a day focused on graduate student self-care, Good says the Committee wants students to understand that it’s okay to relax.
“One of the main things that we really wanted to do was remind people it’s okay to breathe,” she says. “You know, just little things here and there, helping people get through the week.”
A great aspect of being a college student is the potential the atmosphere gives you to meet new people and make new friends within your department. However, once you progress to graduate studies, there’s often little to no time to relax and be social.
“Two spring breaks ago, I was visiting friends in California, and the entire time I kept grading papers and writing things down and responding to professors’ emails,” Powers says. “Even if we do relax, we’re one email away from being thrown back into the middle of things.”
Being a graduate student is like being an undergraduate student two times over. It includes long hours of research and coursework, commonly coupled with teaching responsibilities and little to no social life, all crumpled together in a small wad of nearly no cash.
“It’s working on a project for between two and five years that you really don’t get a lot out of until the very end,” Powers says. “It’s a lot of just rolling boulders up hills.”
ABIGAIL MILLER | amill241@kent.edu
