Posts Tagged ‘college life’

Student Depression: The First Step Is…

Friday, September 13th, 2013

As any college student who’s had experience with any degree of depression can attest, no matter how mild or severe the symptoms, exact origins are mighty difficult to pinpoint. Many students who suffer any degree of depression may at some point attempt to hit that single bullseye, hone in and demarcate a single reason for all their ills. This usually results in systematically missing the mark every single time.

depression bullseye

"Depression has many causes"

Here’s the cold water: there’s more than one bullseye. Way more.

These causes operate in an integrated, latticed network. One cause may be the direct result of another, and this second cause in turn sustains the initial cause, as influencing others.

the complicated network of depression

"Specifically, a latticed network of causes"

For example, financial difficulties make you focus less on schoolwork and more on ruminating and worrying over how to obtain money, resulting in less time spent studying and getting good grades. In turn, poor grades may further facilitate your vexations about getting a decent job after college, influencing self-defeating tendencies like laziness and general hopelessness that steadily eat away you.

These interdependencies bind to form a net that swoops students up and dangles them above a wide ocean of possibilities, isolating them from a liberating and opportunistic life.

This is special kind of net. You can’t simply cut across the bottom and drop down into a depression-free life: you need to hit multiple points at once, and work these points on a continuous basis. Eventually, the net will begin to unravel, and ultimately it will unwind.

the net that holds you from opportunity

Once you relinquish the delimiting thoughts and anxieties that held you prisoner, not only will you feel free to travel along any path you wish, you will also understand the methods for conquering the nets that may come your way in the future.

As you might have inferred from my long-winded metaphor (don’t worry, I have plenty to dish out), tackling depression requires you to address multiple facets of your life, not just one.

Let’s say you’re running to the end zone (which we can think of as the end depression zone) and there are several players all ganging up on you and forcing you out of bounds. These five intimidating foes are all your anxieties, fears, insecurities, etc. They constitute depression. You can picture how difficult it would be to get past this blockade. Imagine now that there are several players on your side, and they easily take down these irksome opponents, clearing you a path to your goal.

end-depression zone

"The end (depression) zone"

Who are these mysterious allies? What keeps them going? Where did they come from? How can you harness their kickass presence to clear a path for yourself?

The vague, astute-monk-atop-the-mountain response would be but a single word: You.

wide mountain monk

"Vague aphorisms are his favorite"

Of course, we’re all in the market for more practical and fleshed out explanations in today’s light-speed world, and so a single word answer to anything is usually met not with deep insight but unfathomable frustration.

befuddled depressed students react like this to wise vague aphorisms

"ME?!"

You can relax. If I wanted to create the world’s shortest self-development guide I’d type “YOU” on a single page, bind it and title it “The Secret of Living the Best Life Possible.” I’m giving up that million-dollar book idea to offer enough real-world examples, wacky metaphors, fun exercises and challenges, personal insight and visuals to make your head spin.

Let’s get you dizzy!

The First Step is…

The first step to healing is frequently touted as acknowledgement. Now, touted is a bit strong since in, let’s say an AA meeting, acknowledgement is far more than just a suggestion—it’s a mandatory step on the path to recovery.

Depression, in a way, is the brain’s acknowledgement of the culmination of distress you’ve experienced thus far. This “acknowledgement” is certainly felt, and is accompanied by a deeply isolating sensation. There may be cases of depressed students who refuse to acknowledge their situation due to embarrassment, fear, social pressure, or pride. But they certainly feel it.

Besides, if you’re reading this, you’ve done a whole load of acknowledgement already.

And so I’d rather begin with something more suitable for the topic at hand: honesty and assessment.

You can call this your first step, not that there is any systematic process to healing yourself (at least in this guide).

These two factors are codependent and work synergistically. Honesty is used to correctly assess yourself, and assessing yourself brings out your self-honesty.

Both are immediately put into play when you fill out the wheel of life, a widely used life-assessment tool:

assess your life with the wheel of life

Filling it out my first time, my wheel looked something like this:

Aleksandr Smechov's original wheel

"I wouldn't keep this as a spare tire..."

Try putting that on a car. You’d probably end up a ditch in the first few minutes. Here are the minimum requirements for a functional wheel: sevens or above all around, with as few deviations of one point as possible, and no deviation of two points or more.

Would you put your wheel on a Ferrari 641?

ferarri 641 requires balanced wheels only

Anything less than nines all around will send this beast spinning out of control. When you have a great wheel, results are exponentially faster. You can imagine a unicycle in traffic, too, if that’s your thing.

unicycle to the max

"Nearly as fast as the Ferrari"

And so this brings us back to our team of allies and the question I posed for them: How can you harness their kickass presence to clear a path for yourself?

By becoming well-rounded, by having a functional wheel to brave your unicycle with (I guess we’re sticking to that metaphor). As you may have by now guessed, balance is the goal of this guide, and helping you achieve it is my mission.

Stay tuned!

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Aleksandr Smechov, Baruch College.

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Student Depression: You’re Definitely Not Alone

Thursday, September 5th, 2013

I wanted it to be a productive day. I really, badly wanted the day to mean something. I didn’t want it go to waste the way it did.

But what could I do? I was depressed.

signs of depression

It was the spring before my senior year in college, a quiet weekday morning; warm, with soft sunshine pouring in through the blinds and a wafting smell of rose hips from the tea brewing in the kitchen. It was the proper setting to get some work done.

And I certainly planned well for the occasion, writing out a plethora of tasks, things I needed to read and write, jobs to apply to, rooms to clean.

I was 21. I had my own one-bedroom, a loving and supportive girlfriend, a passion for the arts, and a summer devoid of distraction and devoted to my own self-betterment.

You can contemplate my confusion several minutes later, when I ended up wallowing in my bed, drinking heavily and sobbing into my arms. How did I go from a highly motivated student to an absolute wreck, wanting to melt into some gutter and vanish out of existence, forgotten forever?

Misery is never solely triggered by a single event, but that single event is a catalyst. My neighbor’s music turned out to be my trigger. But he was never the one who loaded the gun.

No, that one was on me.

I was situated at my desk, tea in hand, ready to get my work underway, when on the other side of my wall my neighbor turned on some salsa music, driving pumping bass into the living.

But it wasn’t the music that made me shout at my wall until my voice turned hoarse; it was the culmination of angst, anger, anxiety, frustration, hatred, helplessness and exhaustion that had accreted within me over the past three years in college.

These emotions, released by my sudden expenditure, quickly leeched my energy until I was a husk of my former self.

I was so tired after shouting so much that I slunk into bed, depressed and apathetic. The drinking that followed did little to numb how I felt.

I tried to get up and write, but my mind would put up an impenetrable blockade, my body would become limp and what sparse energy I had remaining would drain out of me, seemingly gone forever.

When the day was over, I looked back and thought to myself, “What good came out of this? And why does this keep happening to me? Why can’t I just get things done?”

I shook my head, cursing myself, attributing the heavy lethargy to laziness.

But I wasn’t lazy. When I was emotionally stable, I could work 10 hours straight without breaking a sweat. It took several more similar occurrences to see that I was harboring some signs of depression.

I wasn’t alone: as of 2011, according to a nationwide survey by the Nation Institute of Mental Health, 30% of students reported they were so depressed “that it was difficult to function.” In 2012, Healthline.com stated that 44% of college students in America “report having symptoms of depression.”

Depression is a global epidemic: an estimated 350 million people suffer from it, and medicine doesn’t seem to be helping as much as it should: as of 2011, the antidepressant intake rate has increased by 400% from 1988, yet depression among students continues to rise steadily.

signs of depression

Of course, correlation does not equal causation. Student depression can be attributed to a vast number of causes. But this does nothing change the fact that depression is a major problem affecting millions of students.

As I slowly learned, however, there are many ways to help curb depression, on your own and with the help of others, without the aid of antidepressants. There are myriad exercises, materials, and techniques that can aid you in your quest to conquer mental cloudiness, apathy, sadness and a whole other slew of depression symptoms.

I effectively helped myself in half a year. I know you can do it in even less time.

The material that follows is a series of signposts intended to help guide those seeking a way to eliminate the misery constantly inhibiting their creative potential.

If you genuinely wish to reach a new plateau of mental freedom, a state of mind that will allow you to get a grasp on the chaotic years of student life and the trials of transitioning into adulthood, then this material will be a suitable diving board into a less stressful student career.

Time and time again, personal experience has shown me how difficult it is to help those who do not actively seek treatment on their own, and without the constant urging of others.

By seeking out this material, you are taking a giant leap forward: you are putting responsibility and your fate in your own hands.

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Aleksandr Smechov, Baruch College.

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Commencement – Campus Clipper Fiction

Monday, July 8th, 2013

Charlie Wickerson had always been skeptical about the availability of certain attributes within himself that are usually needed to make friends.  Before his embarkation to New York, Charlie never felt the scorn of social loneliness, but to an extent, he knew those who he called friends were just peers only interested in the most superficial and ephemeral qualities of association.  Today, though, Charlie understood the necessity of seizing this opportune time amongst his classmates before it was too late.

 

Together with his blonde and aloof Californian roommate Jackson, Charlie made plans to arrive at the opening ceremony about thirty minutes before the allotted starting time.  The boys agreed upon and stressed the importance of surveying fellow classmates as they streamed into the red-seated auditorium.  They didn’t want to sit bayside while everyone else began university life as emphatically as they had dreamed.

 

“What do you think?” Charlie asked.

 

“I reckon there are some pretty girls to the left,” Jackson said, “down there.”

 

“Well, there are pretty girls all over,” Charlie said, “There are five thousand of us rumbling in here.”

 

“Hell, I don’t know”

 

“Alright,” Charlie said, “Let’s just head down there around the left of the stage.”

 

Charlie and Jackson made their way toward the left-centered area of the auditorium and sat amongst the pretty girls previously marked, who, although they could have only been in the theater for a few minutes, found themselves surrounded by an array of suitors.  What surprised Charlie most were the girls’ radiance, which suggested that were more than delighted to be the spectacle of rows H through K. Perturbed by what they saw, Charlie and Jackson formed nothing more than the outskirts of the insular circle and found themselves only looking with envy toward their peers.  Fortunately for the two boys, they were not the only ones that had not made the cut and began conversing with some others near.

 

“Hi, my name’s Charlie.”

 

“Sam. How are you liking your first days?”

 

“They’ve been decent,” Charlie said, “What are you going to be studying?”

 

“Business and Finance,” Sam said, “What about you?”

 

“I’m not so sure yet,” Charlie said, “How did you know finance was right for you?”

 

“I just wanted to do whatever makes me money.”

 

“Oh, interesting”

 

“You should look into engineering or another STEM degree.” Sam added, “They always have great job prospects.”

 

“I’ll definitely think about it.”

 

Before the words had completely rolled off Charlie’s tongue, the stage’s red curtains were pulled back and the opening ceremony was set to begin.  For the next three hours, Charlie stared at the events without concern or opinion.  He knew he should have just stayed in his dorm

 

Alejandro Font, Student at NYU.

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College Savings Doesn’t Mean College Boredom

Thursday, August 30th, 2012

Being broke is not fun. Your friends are out having the time of your lives and you’re stuck at home due to lack of funds. Although a night out on the town doesn’t need to cost much, you can only get so far with a wallet full of hopes and dreams. With that being said, here are a couple of tips to help turn you into the thrifty man or woman you always knew you could be . . . I’m talking borderline parsimonious.

Saving and budgeting doesn’t just factor into one aspect of your life—it should greatly affect ALL aspects. College savings are important because you are on your own and you want to prove that you can live on your own. Managing your money is the first step to being able to do what you want when you want.

Transportation tends to be one of the biggest expenses in the city. Whether because of gas prices or MetroCards, a large amount of our money goes into getting from place to place. How can this be cut down? Skateboarding, rollerblading, and biking have gotten quite popular. Commuter cycling has doubled since 2005, and there are bike sharing programs around the city whose memberships are substantially cheaper than a monthly MetroCard.  Carpooling to class can be a great way to not only make friends but save money, and, if all else fails, you can walk.

Thrift stores are more popular than they have ever been.  Places such as the Salvation Army and Goodwill can provide you with basic t-shirts and jeans as low as $2. Venture to the nook and crannies of some of Manhattan’s shopping districts and you’re bound to find a Buffalo Exchange or a Beacon’s Closet. These thrift stores sell name brand clothing for ridiculously cheap prices. If you’re a fan of vintage styles and trendy clothing then these stores are for you.

Cheap dates are usually the next thing on your mind since you have the ability to actually make it and the clothes to step out in. Magazines such as <em>The L Magazine</em> and <em>Village Voice</em> are always advertising free movie screening and shows. MyFreeConcert.com is one of my favorite websites for not only concerts but also art exhibits and fun (and, more importantly, free) nights out.

After running around the city you’ve probably worked up quite the appetite. Luckily, the Campus Clipper is here to help. We offer deals across the city, helping students keep the green in their pockets while taming the growling in their stomachs. The $9.99 all-you-can-eat lunch buffet at Bombay Talkie is highly suggested, or if you and a friend need a caffeine boost, there’s a coupon for a free cappuccino or latte with a purchase from The Bean.

So there you have it: proof that you can have fun in the big city and keep a majority of your cash at the same time! Now go out, have fun and be frugal.

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Carlos L., Monroe College. Read my blog!!  Follow me on Twitter and Facebook 🙂

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Have You Checked Out our New Book Yet?

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

The Campus Clipper’s recent publication, the NYC Student Guide, is a must-have for any college student. Whether you’re interested in applying for an internship, scoring cheap Broadway tickets, or finding the best places to eat in the city, the NYC Student Guide can help you! The Guide is filled with over 30 articles, each written by a different student author. Some article titles include: “On Roommates,” “On Studying,” “On Relationships,” and many more. Each article includes beautiful hand-drawn illustrations, also created by students. Finally, the book is light and handy–much lighter than those textbooks you lug around all over campus– so you can carry it with you everywhere. Also unlike a textbook, the Guide is both informative and entertaining to read. The uniquely informal style of our student authors will draw you in. Reading our book is like listening to the advice of a good college friend.

But there are hundreds of college guidebooks out there, you may be saying. What makes this one so different? First and foremost, our guidebook is written by current students, not some stogy man or woman who graduated in 1979. Although he or she must have done extensive research to compile the book, they are not drawing from personal experience. Our authors are more relevant, because they are experiencing college life at the exact same time you are. (Who knows, maybe you’ve crossed paths on campus!)

Finally, (although our guidebook is useful to students studying across the country) it includes many articles that are specific to New York City. Learn where the best thrift shops are located. Find out how to use the local job-searching site, Jatched.com. Discover new bars and nightly hot spots. Every year, thousands upon thousands of high school graduates, from across the country  travel to NYC to study. The myriad opportunities of this city beckon them. Maybe you are one of these students. I was. And if you come armed with the NYC Student Guide, you are sure to make the most of your time here!

Order your copy of the NYC Student Guide Here! 

Written by Megan Soyars, Campus Clipper Blogger

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Make new friends AND keep the old?

Monday, May 10th, 2010

I have these two friends, and they’ve been dating for seven years. A few months ago, they got engaged. I’m always surprised when I think about them because their relationship is so strong, and growing stronger, yet ever since high school ended they hardly ever see each other. The guy is currently in upstate New York with the Navy, and before that he was in the Midwest somewhere – Chicago, I think. The girl is in South Jersey for college, and understandably doesn’t get to visit him all that often. Regardless of all that, and despite their young age, they’re one of the most together couples I’ve ever known.

My question is: How do they make it work? Sure, it can be said that distance makes the heart grow fonder, but enough distance is equally as likely to make the heart forget what it loved about a person in the first place. I’ve been in New York for two years, and I find it extremely hard to keep up with my friends and family back in South Jersey.

I always find myself dividing my relationships up into two sections – New York and Home (because even though I have an apartment up here and live here, I will always think of my parents’ house as Home). It’s very rare that the two ever merge, though I often share stories of home to people up here and vice versa. When talking about friends, I say, “Oh, my best friend back home…” or, “You remember, I told you about her…she’s my best friend at school?” I never just use a person’s name, it’s always with some epithet – a way to keep everything separate and clear in my own mind.

Stories about home are getting less and less the more time I spend up here. I always find some excuse not to visit; oh, I’d come home this weekend but I don’t want to leave Sassy (my cat) alone and she doesn’t like travelling; dude, sorry I’m gonna miss your birthday but I have, like, a zillion tests I need to study for next week. I even missed my Aunt’s wedding because of school obligations and the hassle of travelling two hours on the New Jersey Turnpike.

What I want to know is how people who go away for college – or even if they don’t go away, but are too busy with new responsibilities to enjoy old fun – stay in touch and up to date with their pre-college lives. Is it really as hard as I feel it is, or is it like it is for my two engaged friends, meaning easy and natural?

-Mary K

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