October Reflections
Aidan Pace
This month has proven to be a difficult one in terms of job outcomes, and the insecurity that comes along with the job search insecurity has taken a toll on my mental wellbeing. Namely, feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty can begin to weigh on me when I have invested too much of my identity in my career and not enough in my own self-worth. Coping with the mental fallout from the uncertainty of the future, my mental health and anxiety levels have taken blows, leading to decreased self-confidence and more uncertainty in the future. I have rarely felt such pressure on me to perform and succeed, leading to a lot of disappointed expectations and anxiety.
In the context of Vanderbilt, these feelings of inadequacy have been heightened as this school is wonderfully full of high-achieving individuals. However, when I am feeling unsure of myself, it becomes easy to compare my failures with the successes of those close to me, creating a toxic thought spiral that leads to mental wear. Fortunately, some of the resolutions I defined last month have helped me cope with my current situation.
While specific resolutions have proven difficult to keep, some of the resolutions placed at the beginning of the year have stood as safeguards and grounding pillars on which I can rely when I experience self-doubt. I have struggled to stay consistent on spending time relaxing with friends in the Mayfield, which is unfortunate because I feel that time with others melts away my anxiety. Additionally, I have not been as resolute about actively developing identity outside of academics and work as I could have been. I have done well at connecting with family and adhering to my reflection standards on Monday mornings and in weekly journal entries. When I enter into a few especially rough days, the reflection and check-ins with parents help me to put all my current anxiety and stress into perspective as items that matter somewhat, but they are not important enough to spark the anxiety I feel in the moment. Journaling and reflection have allowed me to put my worries and mental angst into perspective and enabled me to keep moving forward as best I can.
Cullan Bedwell
This month, I decided to examine my current sleep habits and what has led me to form these habits. Ever since I was a little kid, I knew three things about the way my body naturally sleeps: it will sleep as much as I allow it, I’m a very deep sleeper, and I’m a night owl. These qualities are still a part of my identity to this day. Some examples are as follows: I have slept for over 24 hours straight on more than one occasion, I have had to be punched to wake up at a summer camp, and I am not tired despite it currently being 3am.
Other than what has always been present, my story for my current habits all began in High School. I was a swimmer, which entailed an extremely large amount of practice time (about 30 hours at the pool and gym per week), even at ungodly times (5-7am every weekday). During season, I considered it an amazing week to average 5.5 hours of sleep, including the “catch-up” time on the weekends. Most weeks, I slept for 2 hours for 4 days, 6 hours on Friday and Saturday, 4 hours on Sunday, and a 3-hour nap somewhere on the weekend, which brings me to a total of 27 hours per week or just under 4 per day. Even outside of season, I was a part of two club teams, which still asked for lots of my time and energy, causing my sleep to still not be considered normal nor healthy. All that to say that I needed a lot of sleep for physical recovery, but refused to give it to myself. In this, I learned and trained myself to be highly functional despite mental and physical exhaustion.
This has done me well in coming to college. It’s easy for me to stay up late and pull all-nighters to complete work, even multiple days in a row. I think back to moments like during freshman year where I didn’t leave a chair in Upstairs Commons for 24 hours straight or sophomore year where I had a streak of 25ish days straight being up later than 4am or junior year where I got 12 hours of sleep in 7 days and how swimming prepared me for these moments. As you can probably tell, being good about sleeping has not come easily while at Vanderbilt. For most of it, I have described my ideal bedtime as 2am and ideal wake up time as 10am, but that’s obviously not always kept.
Since I’m a senior, I’m trying to obtain a more regular, healthy schedule that can be continued as I enter the workforce next year: 12-8am. I’m currently only in 9 hours looking at 9 for next semester and have a job lined up, so not much is keeping me away from achieving that benchmark. Stay tuned to hear what it’s like to be considered a healthy sleeper.
Yuhang Zhang
In the genuine pursuit of mental wellness, the goal cannot be perfection, but rather to improve upon and gently heal whatever issues there may be. September turned out to be tumultuous, a month that required me to rest upon (sometimes unwillingly) my faith and the friends around me.
One of the biggest things that I felt this month was being unworthy and underqualified. As I’m sure a lot of people at this university feel, I felt like that there never truly was a moment in my life where I wasn’t “excellent” at something. However, this semester, with some really difficult courses and just the constant struggle and anxiety of the job search, I felt like I not only wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t even good. I was just – me.
That was a really difficult struggle for me, because I have grown accustomed to finding my identity within what I can do and who others value me as, not simply in the physical body and imperfect mind that I inhabit. It’s so easy, too – our names become masks that we wear, coating ourselves in accomplishments so as to bear the harsh winds of reality. For it is only by keeping a disposable identity that I am able to shake off feelings of inadequacy and failure – I can just change who I am.
Growing in being vulnerable and truly authentic required me to face a difficult reality – that my mental unwellness wasn’t simply something new to overcome and fight past because it wasn’t abnormal. In fact, it might’ve been one of the clearest glimpses of reality that I’ve found in a while because it forced me to confront the imperfections of the world and of myself. And when I finally had to face those fears, face to face, staring at my own face in the mirror without flinching or looking away – What was there left to say or dodge or polish or edit? It’s just me.
The journey to acceptance is an ongoing one, and I definitely have not found the solution to it – honestly, I don’t think I ever will. However, it came through understanding that though I wasn’t anything special, I didn’t have to be. There were people near me who would love me despite seeing through my flaws, and people who would have mercy and compassion when they saw through my shields, and people who would care for me when I couldn’t fight for myself. I am not a machine, but no one is asking me to be – if I fall apart occasionally, or sometimes don’t have the energy to push myself to the utter brink – well, that’s not perfect or ideal, but it’s okay.