Three letters: The first reflects on college pressures, junior year stress, and the need to for humanities-oriented students to value their choices as much as students who pursue STEM fields; the second contemplates the pressure students feel at Uni, and the ways that social tensions can also create stress; the third explores the challenges of balancing school, college process, extracurricular, and work stress.
One letter, an open letter to Uni students from "a strapping senior lad"
One letter that reflects on the limitations of our experiments in the Utopias-Dystopias class, particularly the way Uni's grade-conscious culture has (in this writer's opinion) stifled some of the more interesting possibilities a class like ours could open up.
Several of you also touched on stress in your blogs this quarter. If you haven't yet, check out Minji's post about how the arbitrary measures of success we're often asked to strive for contribute to her stress (and probably others among us, as well). Betsy also wrote a blog post about how the pressures of Uni students' schedules can get in the way of engaging in the writing process (and other long-term project work) and getting enough sleep. And Kristine wrote about how stress affects her performance in academics, athletics, and other areas.
As I read your stress letters, I began to think about writing a stress letter of my own to share with you. Ironically, I've been too overwhelmed and busy (stressed?) to do that with the care and attention I would want to. But, in responding to one student's letter by email, I ended up writing a sort of stress letter of my own without really intending to. So I'm sharing that with you, if you're interested.
Also, if you care to revisit it, here's a file with the ideas for reducing stress I shared a couple weeks ago, with a few short additional messages added at the end.
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