“Breaks always come right when you need them”– a wise person once told me this. Over the course of my college career, I’ve heard this phrase time and time again, whether it be courtesy of similarly stressed university students counting down the days until winter break, or a chanting placation in my own head. Regardless, it seems as though the difficulties in my life get egregiously worse right before the inevitable release of break. And given that this “wise person” was, to my knowledge, non-possessing of psychic abilities, this final-stretch phenomenon is applicable to many, if not all, college students.
It always seems, by some odd coincidence, that the grueling weeks leading up to a break are not the typical breed of grueling that college students are begrudgingly accustomed to: assignments that seem to stretch on longer than hours in a day, loud roommates, critical parents saying your major is “obsolete” and “why can’t you just be a doctor or something useful?”. Perhaps that last part is just a me-problem. Regardless, hidden in the fine print of our commitment to university is the typical gruel and drag that is college life. But the days or weeks leading up to a break? That’s a special kind of torture.
Right before the typical school break comes to relieve the anxieties and pressures I feel as a college student, I experience a very unique, particular type of angst. I call it the “pre-break angst.” When I know that in five, four, three days I’m going to be released from the swarm of social and academic stressors, somehow all my problems seem to hit me with the force of a Mack truck. All of a sudden, my workload is suffocating my already barren social life, or I make a super snippy retort back to that friend who’s been making subtle digs at me all February long or, more likely, a very creative combination of the two that somehow still includes the original dilemma of the loud roommate.
This loop of heightened emotion and accumulation of stress only seems to be on such a highly concentrated repeat right before the anticipated end that comes with break. But why does the week right before break seem to be such a tumultuous time for college students?
It’s easy to chalk it up to course load. There is definitely a correlation; during the week before break, more popularly dubbed “midterms” or “finals week,” assignments are more strenuous and demand more time and energy. We pound information into our heads as we study, then flesh it all out with a fine-toothed comb on our exams. Naturally we wouldn’t be of the most sound mind when undergoing the brain-numbing study routine that comes with midterms or finals week. Moreover, the effects of this high-pressure period bleed into other aspects of our lives such as, say, our relationships with friends, our families or significant others, causing seemingly new problems that plague our minds until the metaphorical school bell rings. But really, I think these problems were always there.
My roommate will always be loud. That’s a fact I’ve had to accept from the beginning. But these seemingly newfound problems that rub me the wrong way — innocent jokes at my expense, being crushed by the weight of my academic commitments or feeling excluded from a group of friends — aren’t as newfound as they seem. They are often very indicative of more visceral problems which have simply been laying under the radar until this catalytic point of exposure. And during that hallowed week before break, I feel like I’m going to explode from all of the pressure.
The knowledge, or rather the notion, that all of our problems will come to an end in a few days’ time allows us to express and feel our emotions with less inhibitions or perceived “realness” attached to them. Especially since the week before break is already a time of undeniable academic stress, it’s very easy to assume a sense of direct relation with other elements of stress during this time and disregard these so-called heightened emotions, chalking them up to the damning circumstance of pre-break. Pennsylvania State University Biobehavioral Health Professor Jennifer Graham-Engeland is currently researching the effects of academic stress, such as a period of exams, on college students’ mental health and has found that the prolonged period of exam week can severely exacerbate mental health as students experience a drastic shift in academic pressure. This almost ubiquitous level of academic stress is certainly making way for other stressors and negative reactions to manifest, but it is merely a component rather than the source of most turmoil.
During the week before a break, I’ve gotten into little spats with friends, both said and received some unkind things with my roommate or bawled in the UgLi at ungodly hours of the night. But the minute break begins, these problems dissipate and the slate is wiped clean. I feel rejuvenated — fresh as a daisy — and ready to get back into the swing of things now that my alleged irrational phase of emotions has passed. Thank goodness that whole situation is over, right? Wrong.
Break will come and go, and in one-to-two months’ time, it’s the week before break all over again and, surprise, my conflict resolution has not gotten any better. The same problems will resurface again and my eyes will feel sore from an underwhelming lack of sleep, crying or rolling them at my friends who, for some odd reason, just seem to be pissing me off extra. At the time, these problems seem to derive from an accumulation of stress, but really the roots of the problems are innate, propelling this seemingly inescapable loop.
Though such issues seem to arise at full capacity during this pre-break phase, my inarguably taxing workload (despite not being a doctor) and sense of insecurity within friendships was always present. These problems were just buried under my stronger, heavier fear of confronting them. The answer was clear: This period of pre-break was my way of finally acknowledging the problems and painful feelings that felt too big for me to unpack regularly. And the magical clean slate that occurred after I rendered these emotions as invalid and circumstantial was just my excuse for not confronting these very real, very rational issues. I allowed myself to be afraid of these emotions and let them build up until they inevitably exploded. The explosion and all of its debris would stay on campus and, by the time I came back, it would all be forgotten. And then of course, I always chided myself for letting the common stress of midterms and finals plague me and my personal life yet again. After all, breaks always come right when you need them, right?
The lesson learned in this situation is that sudden outbursts of negative emotions are rarely ever circumstantial, and that breaks, though potentially disguised as such, are not magical band-aids that mend the aforementioned problems. Such problems are commonly underlying and their inevitable explosion is oft indicative of avoidance coping, in which issues that cause or could cause a person elevated stress are stifled and resisted rather than being confronted with. The contrast of two extremes — intense stress and intense relief — condemns both pre-break and break to a warped understanding. What lies between these two is a cornucopia of pent-up emotions or stressors and most importantly, a lack of a concrete solution. Though I don’t know if there’s a way, or if we should even want a way, out of this cycle.
Upon graduation, it can be assumed that the pressures of exam week or “pre-break angst” will dissipate as exam week and pre-break selves no longer exist. However, the stifling of certain problems that plague us will still be a facet in our lives, to varying extents. We can’t possibly tackle everything all at once, and sometimes our emotions will escape when the environment around us seems to prompt their release. The rapid environmental changes that college acquits students with renders the façade of an immediate change and solution, which can be mimed in any real-world situation outside of university. Maybe it will manifest itself into the Friday Blues, right before the release from the nine-to-five into the weekend. For college students, the temporary tranquility received from break may not resolve our underlying worries, but then again, these deeper, more persisting issues aren’t necessarily ones that can be resolved with some sort of grandiose acceptance or moment of mindfulness either. Perhaps this coping mechanism is the best I’ve got despite its evident downfalls and unhealthiness; sometimes certain feelings and troubles are just too difficult to tackle head-on, and it’s easier to just keep my head down and soldier through until the time is right. Or maybe the real moment of release is pre-break, where the emotions we cannot express on a day-to-day basis finally burst out of their neat, tightly enclosed shell. And then we pick ourselves back up over the break and do it all over again, and hopefully we come undone a little less each time.
Statement Columnist Irena Tutunari can be reached at tutunari@umich.edu.