-Christopher Catbagan (Unsplash) Depressed Student
Chloe Richey
April 16, 2022
English Composition 1152
Professor Weaver
Academic Pressure affecting College Students Mental Health
Introduction:
The history of academic pressure started in the 17th century when grading systems were developed. As the schools started to develop more, requirements to be successful in life like having A’s started to pressure the students. Effects from academic pressure started to be visible in college scholars. Some adults started to pay close attention to their students and decided to make different options to reach out to the students like creating videos. Relating to Dr. Chew’s video, “I Blew the Exam, Now What?” (Dr. Chews) he distinguishes do’s and don’ts to help students whose mental health is in the state of giving up and not wanting to continue. The importance of understanding academics affecting higher ed students is that the grading system is the “quiet” cause of academic pressure, pressure from grades influences the daily life of college students, and the social support helps decrease academic stress from hurting scholars’ mental state of mind.
Discussion:
Grades themselves are not the main cause of the bad mental health of college students, grading systems are the main factor discouraging college students today. A grading system is the evaluation of a student’s performance on daily activities or exams. The first-ever college grading system was invented in 1785 by Yale University. During the 1780s, grades were not viewed as competition and a fair system for other students, but later in the years that all changed. When letter grades A-F were introduced in the 1940s, women, and men were competing to meet the “perfect” spot leading students to have academic pressure. According to J Randall, & Engelhard, “Taking the Stress out of Grading”, he states “Over half of our grading scale is an F, and if we assume a C grade signifies minimum attainment of course standards, then over two-thirds of our grading scale describes the insufficient performance, and only one-fifth of the scale describes academic success (A or B)” (Randall and Engelhard, 2). The indication of his article, there is so much weight on a letter grade of F and the view of a C being the bare minimum, it causes students to feel more challenged to not receive anything below A and B. This unbalance weight of the grading system would cause a higher chance of students failing more than passing.
An example Randall and Engelhard used was “A single missed assignment caused a 22 percent decrease and a two-grade-level drop”, (Randall and Engelhard, 2). If a student started to have a grade of 95, which is an A and misses one assignment it would now cause them to have a C. This imbalance puts more pressure on students and makes it harder for that type of student to go back to an A. The message from this has students’ mental health is a part of anxiety and “seek security with learning as the casualty,” stated Mark Espinola’s article “History of College Grading System,” (Espinola, 1). Because of being cautious of the grading system, college students who continue to work in their major start to look for teachers who do not give a hard A. According to Espinola “History of College Grading System,” he states “Ideally, students searching through Rate My Professor would be looking for signals of good teaching, but many of the student comments focus on the course grading scale.” (Espinola, 1). This means that higher ed scholars focus more on the easiness of the grading scale in the next class they take. College scholars’ mental health starts to develop in way of finding an easier way out and develop persistent changes in mental health and life.
College students’ mental health has its response to academics. One of them is ending their own life, which is suicide. In the article “Grades Are at the Center of the Student Mental Health Crisis” the author Joshua Eyler, states “Rates of anxiety, depression and even suicidal ideation have spiked dramatically, and academic stress tied to grades is a leading cause of this escalation” (Eyler, 1). He suggests that stress from grades is the cause of bad mental health effects like suicide and depression. Academic stress does not only influence students’ mental health but also forces universities and college staff to be more involved in their student life. Campus leaders from Worcester Polytechnic Institute guided students who were in need. Academic stress on students also impacted WPI to introduce programs that helped students to give their own teachers advice on revising their grading scale.
Additionally, some frequent situations that have occurred with students who experience soaring academic stress that links to depression are “procrastination, falling behind in classes and withdrawing socially” as stated by Hayley Kraft “Mental Health and Academic Success in College” (Kraft, 1). Kraft indicates that academic stress can create different consequences for a college scholar. With the non-treatment of anxiety, college students could find it hard to focus on test-taking and remembering important things. This could lead to poor grades in school. Because of academic stress, college scholars’ crisis of mental health has increased drastically.
College students need the availability of programs for coping with academic stress around them and people need to listen to them. With this, adults could help them feel that grades do not define who they are as a person. In the article “Coping with Academic Stress: Ambiguity and uncertainty tolerance in college students” Journal of American College Health, Urvi Paralkar and Douglas Knutson suggests that “One explanation for this positive relationship could be that when people experience negative emotions, they are more likely to seek out for social support to deal with the discomfort”, (Paralkar and Knutson, 1). Paralkar and Knutson indicate that college students who experience heavy academic stress would need help from social support. An example would be a student who failed a test would probably feel like giving up, but in their mind, they try to seek out help. Social support comes with having friends or family to talk to or even looking up videos to help you move on from it like Dr. Chew’s videos.
Dr. Stephen L. Chew is a professor in psychology that creates videos that help scholars who are feeling the pressure from academic stress to assist students not to give up. One video he created was “How to Get the Most Out of Studying: Part 5 of 5, I Blew the Exam, Now What?”, and Dr. Chew goes on to deep details about students that failed an exam and steps to move on from there. He connects academic stress formally tests stress to college scholars on what not to do and what to do. This could be a type of social support that students may need or watch to help them feel that it’s ok to experience failure.
In addition, in the article, “Resilience amid Academic Stress: The Moderating Impact of Social Support among Social Work Students”, Advance In Social Work (2008), Hubbard, P., Muhlenkamp, A. F., & Brown, N and Martinelli suggest that “Student perceptions of social support have also been positively associated with health-promoting behaviors such as exercise, good nutrition, and avoidance of substance abuse” (Hubbard and Brown, 109) indicating with social support from communities or even families have brought positive reactions to academic stress from college scholars. Some of those reactions are being able to handle stress, staying away from substance abuse, and having more self-esteem within the college scholars. Social support has a positive relationship with students’ mental health and that’s why the community should listen to help their mental health.
Conclusions
In conclusion, college scholars’ mental health is in a negative relationship with academic stress, mainly grades. Grades seem to have a toll on students that cause them to make them feel that anything less than an A is a failure or not good enough. The imbalanced grading system is the main reason for grades dictating students’ minds. The scholars have different ways of responding to the discouraging grades they receive leading to their deaths. There are ways we, the community, can stop letting this happen, which is having social support available. Some ways to be part of social support are help volunteering or being part of a fitness group College scholars’ mental health and academic stress need to be addressed and stopped.
Citations
Chew, Stephen L. “How to Get the Most out of Studying: Part 5 of 5 … – Youtube.” Youtube, Sanford University, 16 Aug. 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QVRiMkdRsU.
Randall, J., & Engelhard, G. (2010). Examining the grading practices of teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(7), 1372–1380. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/taking-the-stress-out-of-grading
Espinola, Mark. “History of the College Grading Scale.” GradeHub, 19 June 2018, https://gradehub.com/blog/college-grading-scale/.
Eyler, Joshua. “Grades Are at the Center of the Student Mental Health Crisis: Inside Higher Ed.” Just Visiting, 7 Mar. 2022, http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/grades-are-center-student-mental-health-crisis.
Kraft, Hayley. “Mental Health and Academic Success in College.” BetterYou, www.betteryou.ai/mental-health-and-academic-success-in-college/.
Paralkar U, Knutson D. Coping with academic stress: Ambiguity and uncertainty tolerance in college students. J Am Coll Health. 2021 Sep 8:1-9. doi: 10.1080/07448481.2021.1965148. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34494940.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07448481.2021.1965148
Hubbard, P., Muhlenkamp, A. F., & Brown, N. (1984). The relationship between social support and self-care practices. Nursing Research, 33, 266-270. https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/advancesinsocialwork/article/view/51/195
Martinelli, A. M. (1999). An explanatory model of variables influencing health promotion behaviors in smoking and nonsmoking college students. Public Health Nursing, 16(4), 263-269. https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/advanc