Ferris Bueller once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” But this can feel impossible in the fast-paced world of a UT student. With so many academic responsibilities and so little time to complete them, it’s important to know when and how to ask for help when you need it.
Caroline Lilly, government and Human Dimensions of Organizations junior, discusses how she feels about how time moves on campus. The transition from having all of your classes in one day in high school to them being spread out in college can make time feel sped up.
Pretty much everything is done outside of class, and I feel like that makes it move a lot faster,” Lilly said. “The days are long, but the weeks are short.”
The recommended ratio for class-to-study time is for every hour spent in class, you should spend two to three hours studying. This means that if students are taking the recommended 15 hours of classes, they should spend 30-45 hours a week studying. These hours would require that, in some weeks, students should put more time into school than they would in a full-time job.
“I came to college and then suddenly everything was just so fast-paced,” said biomedical engineering sophomore Ananya Anand. “It became so much easier to burn out.
The National Library of Medicine reports 59.9% of students have experienced feelings of academic burnout. This term is defined as feelings of exhaustion and pessimism toward school stemming from academia-related stress.
“It’s really easy for students to feel overwhelmed and to neglect their mental health just because that is the pace of college,” said Anand.
You hear so many times how important it is to protect your mental health, but when can you, if it doesn’t feel like you have a second to breathe outside of class? Spending more time on school work than a full-time job can feel like you can’t take a step back and actually enjoy college.
“You aren’t the only person feeling this way,” said Adrian Lancaster, peer support project Coordinator for the Longhorn Wellness Center. “From my experience and what I’ve heard from my students, there’s this fear that if I tell people that I’m struggling, they’ll think less of me.”
Knowing when to reach out for help can provide support for students who are feeling overwhelmed. Building community is one of the most important things you can do to support your own mental health because it allows you to confide in people who are also overwhelmed. A sense of solidarity can help you properly discuss and address the reasons behind feeling rushed and help you slow down.
A resource that is offered by the Longhorn Wellness Center that can support students who may be struggling due to their workload is their Longhorn SHARE project, or support, healing, active listening, reciprocity and empowerment, which students can join by filling out a simple interest form.
“It is a program that was designed to be a mental health peer support program …. The tool that we use to achieve greater mental health outcomes is through this social connection and creating spaces where students can open up about and be honest about their experiences and struggles and support each other reciprocally,” said Lancaster.
Don’t let college pass you by, and know when to ask for support. Build communities, take time for yourself and take Ferris’ advice to stop and look around every so often.
Healy is a journalism junior from San Antonio, Texas.
