Meadow Day Is Not Enough

I spend all day studying. I worry if I don’t keep working I will fall behind. I desperately want to take time for myself, but I can’t seem to relax. Like most students, I need a break. But our two-day spring break, Meadow Day, is not enough during such an overwhelming time.

It’s been over one year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and I’m exhausted. Despite Smith’s constant assurances that administration and professors are taking students’ mental health into account, other than the transition to virtual courses, my academic life has proceeded as usual. 

Some might say that this is normal college burnout — that all university students feel this way at some point in their academic career regardless of a global pandemic. But there is no way to disregard the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. As much as we might wish it was, life is not the same and we are all still adjusting, students and faculty alike.

In my intermediate Russian class, we are learning about verbs of position and positioning. To practice this concept, our professor asked us questions about how we situate objects and ourselves. One of the questions she asked (in Russian, of course) was how many hours a day we spend sitting at a computer. The answers ranged from eight hours to confused shakes of the head and answers of ‘I don’t know.’ We all laughed it off, brushing off this monumental and potentially unhealthy aspect of our lives.

This is why burnout is different this year. For most of us, our days consist of sitting in the same chair and looking at the same screen all day long. I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I recognize how privileged I am to receive this education and to be living on campus this semester. But the pre-pandemic effort is not enough. 

This semester especially, professors and administrators have gone back to business as usual. Even though, for the vast majority of us, not much has changed since the pandemic started. We still feel the effects of it every day, we still spend all day on zoom and we still are struggling with mental health. More than that, most of us are doing it alone. Students on campus may be able to see friends within guidelines, but I, at least, often have to choose between seeing my friends and doing my schoolwork. Schoolwork almost always wins out. 

With the heavy workload of college, and the emotional exhaustion of the pandemic, Meadow Day feels like a slap in the face. I understand the logic behind it—  potential Spring Break travel puts the campus at a higher risk, a sentiment which completely disregards the needs of off-campus students. Not only that, but almost all of the Meadow Day activities are in-person, only accessible to students on or near campus. 

Furthermore, most of my on-campus friends won’t be doing relaxing activities. Sure, we’ll sleep in, but we’ll have work to do. I personally have two books to read over the Meadow Day break. Also, we have one Meadow Day make-up class on May 14, making it less of a break and more of a schedule re-arrangement. 

The last thing I want is to sound whiny. That isn’t the point of this editorial. Like many students across the globe, I just want universities to recognize that this arrangement isn’t working — even before the pandemic, balancing school, work, and family responsibilities made higher education inaccessible or extremely difficult to many — and perhaps the time has come to remake the system.

[ Image: Paradise Pond (smith.edu) ]