Saturday, February 4, 2017
Project Proposal
On the first day of class, we spoke about what we would write our final papers on. I automatically chose stress in college. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, for I am a senior psychology major applying to graduate school for social work. I, like many others my age, suffer from severe anxiety that did not peak until I reached college. I think it would be interesting to find out what has made stress levels in university so high in the last few years. Since it is such a recent spike, I plan to look in to privatization's role, along with other factors in every day college stress. Does the stress come from the students or the university?
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It's great to know what you want to do for your project so early. It eliminates a big source of the anxiety that comes with research writing, which starts with choosing and committing to what you want to write about.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great topic and very timely. I also think that college may be one of the triggers for anxiety and is definitely feeding the epidemic among young people (which I have read about and know from the experience of my sister-in-law, who found her experience as a college psychiatrist overwhelming, as I told you). The critical thing is that young people with anxiety have to try not to blame themselves for what they are experiencing, even though -- as Dana Becker argues -- we seem to be encouraged to privatize stress and anxiety and see ourselves and our bodies as the main source of what ails us. But the real causes of stress and anxiety are often outside of ourselves and have a social source.
I just read a wonderful article on the rise of anxiety among Gen Y. Apparently it is a huge problem in Britain as well (where privatization is also a major issue):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/health/anxiety-the-epidemic-sweeping-through-generation-y/
Though it begins with a very personal reflection, it eventually gets deep into many of the social issues that may be combining to cause this anxiety spike. And it discusses many of the books that have informed my own thinking about the anxiety problem.
After reading that article, I start to think that the privatization higher education has made college into such a critical moment for young people, which does so much to determine their futures -- and with so many long-term financial repercussions riding on those choices. It is also a time of incredible increase in social encounters (which can spawn social comparison, as Armstrong and Hamilton's work shows) and a huge increase in the number of choices available every minute of the day (as college life releases young people from parental control and limitation). College is a pressure cooker.
I look forward to seeing where this project goes. I think I will learn a lot myself along the way.