Give Exonians the Freedom to Think
A vast majority of Exonians would agree that Exeter is extremely rigorous. If that were false, we wouldn’t still be seeing memes on Facebook about how many “previously high performing, now emotionally unstable” teenagers there are at Exeter. Yes, we hear the occasional comment about how grade inflation has worsened since a few decades ago, but being an Exonian is still not easy.
We have to remember that it was much less competitive to get into a good college in the 1970s. As an upper, I find myself sometimes working upwards of five hours to finish all my assignments well. The challenging Exeter curriculum can be highly rewarding: it ensures, for the most part, that procrastination is kept to a minimum and that students put effort into their assignments and tests. We also learn and retain a lot of interesting and useful information. However, if the school does not better regulate the workload Exonians manage every day, we will see an increasing number of mental health issues on campus.
We pride ourselves on Exeter’s rigor, but it cannot come at the price of students’ happiness, self-confidence and their balance of work and free time. Even though we are talking about a group of students who love to learn, all students need free time, not just to relax, but to diversify our range of interests outside of academics. Classroom learning is effective and irreplaceable, but there are so many lessons to be learned from experiences outside class as well. These lessons are often the ones we utilize most in our lives. When we spend all our time working in class, we lose time to cultivate the depth of our outside interests, and we may find that we slowly lose interest in them altogether. I believe this is one of the contributing factors to the formation of the “Exeter Bubble,” as we are so focused on our grades that we simply don’t have the time and energy to care for much else.
Caring about students’ well-being and the academic rigor of courses should not be mutually exclusive for the faculty. In my experience, while most teachers are generally understanding, I have encountered a few who have refused to grant me extensions many days in advance of the assignment or test. It is beneficial when teachers are open to offering help to students who feel as though they are struggling. I know that for me, a few reassuring words from a teacher whose class I felt like I wasn’t doing well in made all the difference. It motivated me to try even harder, knowing that the enormous amount of effort I put into my work was being taken into account and that my work would eventually pay off.
It is a great thing that mental health is becoming a more normalized discussion topic. We must capitalize on this fact to better serve students’ mental well-being because a fair amount of students’ problems stem from anxiety over grades. Exonians hold themselves to a high standard, and often we overwork ourselves in order to reach those standards. If the faculty did more to express concern for student well-being, then students could experience the benefits of an even greater circle of support, and the burden would not fall solely on the counselors in the health center. This would be easy to achieve. In fact, many teachers already do a great job of being sympathetic to students’ needs and understand that students usually know the extent of what they can take on and what they would struggle with.
Perhaps a solution would be for the faculty, students and counselors to meet together so that we can discuss changes in approach and curriculum. We need something different, even if the solution is not easy to agree on.