For this assignment, I reached out to a few friends but also a couple strangers walking around campus which was kind of intimidating, but after the fact very interesting. I spoke to them and stated what my concern was, at first not expressing to them why and that I was doing this for a homework assignment for my english class.

First, there was Mia. Mia has been one of my best friends since the start of school back in august so it was comfortable to hit her with the questions first until I got a feel for what I was doing. Simply asking what her thoughts on the idea of mental health for college students were and she came back with an answer as simple as the question, she said “I think it’s horrible”. It was natural to laugh and respond agreeingly but when I asked why she continued to explain how it mostly is too much work with not enough time to break, it’s always a continuous cycle of feeling drained and working so hard to get just an “ok” grade. She expressed her concern for the deterioration of mental health in college students as she believed there should be more awareness of the struggles and difficulties.

Next, there was Sam. Sam is a friend from back home in the same major as me which made it easy to relate to on the topics of work loads, stress and anxiety, and let downs… Sam sarcastically replied to my question “Emilie I have yet to figure out how college is supposed to help me for vet school when I can even do chemistry because of our dinosaur of a teacher”. If you didn’t know, our professor might be the worst teacher there ever was. I agree with Sam in multiple ways, because when you put your all into a class and end up doing average at the end, it takes away from it all and makes you feel as if all your hard work was not good enough. This could have an effect on a students mental health by having them begin to slack off, because why study hard when you will get the same grade as if you did not do anything at all.

Changing the view a little bit, next there is Joe. Joe is a childhood friend from home who was interested in the physical health of the interview. This one is interesting though, because I asked him why he wanted to talk about this and he responded with, “with all this shit going on with school I need some way to destress”. Did I mention Joe is in pre-vet as well… He continued to laugh then say “but I guess this is the grave we dug for ourselves you know”, and I agreed because although he spoke upon physical health, his reasoning explained it was due to keeping a healthy mindset.

Now, we get into the strangers and I met Sabrina. Sabrina is a physical therapy major and seemed very calm, cool, and collected about school which was the first i’ve ever seen of since the beginning of school back in August. Again, I expressed my questions asking her how often do you spend time to yourself outside of doing schoolwork. She replied saying, “is that a real question because I don’t think there’s enough in the day to finish schoolwork along with additive stress, let alone have time for myself” and that really shocked me because it is true. I think back on my assignment for english where we set our phone aside for homework and relaxed and even in those 15 minutes of relaxing, I was relaxing for a homework assignment not because I had down time. There is so much pressure to solely focus on school and it is very tough especially when in a major so destructive with its piles of work.

Lastly, I met Kate. Kate funnily enough is another pre-vet major who I had not met until two weeks ago when we were so excited to live together next year. Kate was very chill when I asked her my questions. She didn’t seem stressed like everyone else but it came to my attention that her answers were the most interesting. I asked her “do you believe you have enough energy to have five 8 a.m classes, an internship, homework, and downtime. She replied, “no, but despite school being our priority I am just as important if not more”. She opened my eyes to really see that it is not all about time, but how you learn to manage it. She said this helped strengthen her mental and physical health because she found time to rest her brain and go to the gym or nap which she said “revived her enough” to get on with what she had to do next.

Overall, I enjoyed this project because it allowed me to hear those opinions that were the same as mine but also different. As I sat in ISE, I thought to myself, “how the hell am I going to write this”, but I am so glad I did and got the opportunity to speak to others about this topic rather than conclude that my opinions were the only opinions there are. I look forward to being more open with these ideas of mental and physical health while continuing to take some of the advice I gained from these interviews.