Alexa Nicolas | Give me a break

I can’t quite look forward to Thanksgiving. While I’m all about turkey and getting red-wine drunk with my parents, I’m dreading a research paper that’s due the Monday after break.

No one needs to be reminded that breaks are good. Students and professors alike have been muttering, “I can’t wait for the holiday,” for days. But our long weekends are no longer sacred, putting our mental health at stake.

While we all tout the fact that Penn tops best college rankings and is a winner when it comes to free speech and sustainability — we’re also second in the nation this year when it comes to stress, according to the Huffington Post. The Daily Beast also ranked us as the second most stressful college in the United States — hardly a thing to be proud of. Many of our peer schools don’t even make the top 10.

These rankings suggest that Penn has a culture of chronic stress. Passive-aggressive behavior and unhealthy habits abound on campus and many students find it difficult to make time to see friends if their schedules don’t naturally collide.

Studies have paid particular attention to how stress affects college freshmen. “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” a report by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported that mental health among first-year students was at a 25-year low.

In analyzing the survey, The New York Times reported that part of the problem is that students lack the resources — like leisure time — to relieve stress. This inability to manage stress leads to a poor sense of emotional health.

Freshmen especially need commitment-free spaces to study, visit friends at nearby colleges or return home to their families. They need space to reflect on college and connect with their support networks, no matter how near or far they may be.

But the problem extends across all four years. In May, Business Week reported that the number of college students facing stress is increasing across the board, along with the percentage of students who face anxiety issues, depression, eating disorders and self-harm.

With these worrying trends, the University should not treat breaks as reading days for students to catch up on work and move along in their syllabi. Holidays, rather, should be a way to release chronic stress.

In researching for this column, the majority of online search results for “college” and “stress” revealed “tips on how to relieve stress.” The abundance of websites offering helpful ways to combat anxiety in college speaks to the fact that many students are overburdened and informally seeking advice.

Providing real breaks is a realistic way to give students enough time to relax. We need to reconceive time off from school as an opportunity for students to tune out in front of the TV at home or head to Las Vegas without the nagging stress from an impending paper or exam. Breaks, in short, are crucial for maintaining a healthy and balanced life.

Stress can be broken down into two types — the good and the bad, according to William Alexander, the director of Counseling and Psychological Services.

“A good stress that can be a motivator and a bad kind of stress that wears on you if you don’t alleviate or resolve it in a timely manner,” he said, adding that “most of that experience has to do with not knowing how to get out of that stress.”

For me — and many other students — that way out is fall break, Thanksgiving, spring break and the occasional hurricane or snowstorm that shuts down campus and gives us the gift of time.

Being a student is an all-consuming occupation. As paying consumers for this educational good, we deserve to be protected. (Yes, I am admittedly not a free-market capitalist.)

We need to have policies in place to protect our fall breaks and Thanksgivings as time to travel and explore new interests — policies to safeguard our sanity.

Here’s a simple rule that would allow professors to keep lecturing and syllabi to continue without disrupting anyone: no exams, quizzes or papers should be due the first class back after a break.

This policy would give students the chance to catch up with friends and family at home and save reviewing and editing (or if we’re being honest — starting) papers for when we return to campus.

We shouldn’t have to wait for a hurricane for a real fall break.

Alexa Nicolas, a former 34th Street editor, is a College senior from New York, N.Y. Her email address is anicolas@sas.upenn.edu “The Fine Print” appears every other Tuesday. Follow her @____Alexa___

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