Lisa, therapist: I believe I am/we are seeing the result of the so-called “Race to Nowhere”—the achievement/status driven culture that our kids are raised in. My clients have spent their childhoods and in particular their adolescences putting their healthy development on hold, coached and managed by parents who are so fearful and anxious about helping their children succeed that there is simply no room for their children, my clients, to begin to know themselves. When they arrive at college, the wheels come off. They are so hard on themselves, and so out of touch with what they really care about—discovering their true interests is a foreign concept. There is such a push for perfection that normal life skills (learning time management, healthy sleep habits, adult responsibilities) are not in place. Substance abuse and other methods of self-medicating are rampant. Most of my students text with their parents multiple times a day and parents regularly run interference for them. Combine this with the incessant comparisons students make of themselves to others via social media, financial burdens and dread of graduation (for after a lifetime of curated education, graduation feels like falling off a cliff) and you have a perfect storm.
DrHibiscus: I am currently a student at the University of Maryland who suffers from anxiety and depression…
I am sick and tired of hearing the facile, tired response that my generation is “soft” and has been ill equipped by coddling “helicopter parents.” My parents, and those of my peers do not fit this straw man caricature and my peers are extremely hard-working, intelligent, and ambitious. I went to weekly group therapy provided by my school’s Counseling Center last year. What I learned about myself and about my peers was that our main source of stress was that we were simply not allowed to be human… My generation is not suffering because we didn’t learn how to lose a game of flag football. We’re suffering because everything we do is filtered through a lens of consumerism. We see ourselves as “products” to be “branded” and “marketed” in all venues of our lives: social, romantic, and professional. This has been a mindset inculcated into us from an early age.
EVERYTHING we do is seen as instrumental towards marketing ourselves for the college admission boards, or for the job market, or to help us rush a fraternity or sorority, or to help us win friends, or to help us be a more attractive potential partner. You see the capitalist worldview has infiltrated our psychology, and our sense of self-worth. And it is toxic. It results in fear of being ourselves and following what we really want to do. It results in micro-managing every aspect of our lives to best effect so that it looks good for Facebook or LinkedIn or Tinder. It results in constant comparisons with our peers (which causes depression) and catastrophizing of any potential dent to our marketability (which results in anxiety). Essentially, it results in a dehumanized mindset.
Of course depression and anxiety are rampant.
In 2014, Penn commissioned a task force to assess the climate on campus and how this climate might affect students. The eight-page report used the term “destructive perfectionism” and observed that “the drive for academic excellence along with the perception that in order to be successful one needs to hold leadership roles in multiple realms contributes to the amount of stress and distress experienced by Penn students.”
This last quote is essentially a description of the “Penn Face,” which is the phrase used to describe the culture of appearing effortlessly perfect. It’s a concept that the three leaders of Active Minds very much want to talk about. All experienced it, and continue experiencing it, and all believe that variations of the concept likely exist on campuses across the country. Each of the three students at the table—Kathryn DeWitt, Peter Moon, Devanshi Mehta—reached out to Active Minds because they were struggling to varying degrees with their emotional and mental well-being. And the climate at Penn contributed to that struggle.
Devanshi: I think Penn students coined the phrase “Penn Face” to represent how everyone gives off a certain image of being okay, and having everything together, and almost, like, say, even though I’m stressed, I still have time to have a perfect social life, perfect grades, to join all these clubs, and I’m super successful. But in reality people are stressed, and do feel alone, and it’s important to address those things.
Peter: Picture a duck, and below the surface they are scrambling for their lives, but above the water everything appears peaceful—not a care in the world. That’s Penn Face.
Kathryn: I think Penn Face also comes from the expectations we have for ourselves, and that people around us have for us at an Ivy League university—you’re supposed to be having the best four years of your life. We get this messaging everywhere. And having a hard time is not part of that messaging, which perpetuates the belief that “I’m not okay” must mean that something is wrong with you instead of something a lot of people might feel.
Devanshi: Ivy League schools compile all the top students in one place and then all of a sudden you look left and right and you’re like, “Everyone is my clone.” I literally got here and I was like, “I’m not unique, I am not special, I am just like everyone else.” The culture here, the first week of school, the library is packed, everyone is studying. That was my identity in high school—she’s a hard worker. And I came here and it’s like, “Who am I?” And it manifested itself in anxiety and sadness. I didn’t feel comfortable with who I was anymore.
(Here, Devanshi is cutting to the core of something specific. On one hand, the job of parents is to make their child feel special and unique, as if they can do anything they put their mind to. After all, if our parents don’t believe in us, who will? But instilling those beliefs in a child is healthy only if balanced with a reality check about what the world is like, about how hard and difficult it can be, and about how few people will likely ascribe those same qualities of uniqueness and wonder to you. Somewhere along the way, we’ve started to believe that delivering this second message is cruel. But it’s not. Cruelty is offering either message—without the other.)
Kathryn: It’s like, if you have a sprained ankle, you can say that you have one and people say, “Yeah, that makes sense why you’re in pain right now.” But if you say you’re depressed, nobody really wants to talk about that, or believe it’s a real thing. Also, the competition here is awful.
Peter: And it’s made harder because the person you perceive yourself as competing with is trying so hard to be modest about it, like it’s no big deal.