To the surprise of everybody, students at the University of Aberdeen are reporting record levels of low stress, anxiety, and depression this exam season. There is certainly no mounting pressure of multiple classes’ deadlines all lining up, or the sense that one’s academic journey is dependent on any one mark.
In fact, students have maintained a chipper and upbeat mood around campus, and have certainly been attending all of their classes. A snippet of an interview with a current Aberdeen student is as follows:
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at by asking me about anxiety and depression. Do I seem stressed to you? Because my several therapists and I don’t appreciate that question.”
She continued:
“Why would exams make me feel worse? Because they determine my marks and my future and my life and my job?”
She then had to leave as she was already 15 minutes late to a seminar.
There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that regular readings and classwork have been thrown to the wayside in order to scrape together the last 100 words before 12 p.m.. In fact, attendance has been at a record high, per several unverified and misquoted sources.
“There’s even more people in my lectures than there were in week one!”, says someone on campus, who this author has decided is a top lecturer at the university (despite no clear indication of this).
Additionally, the library has not seen any significant rise in numbers of students studying there. Any reports of record high numbers of seats being filled is a conspiracy peddled by the librarians who want to seem important. This is noticeable, because every other exam season ever in the history of the university has involved the library’s attendance going up, but that is just not happening this year.
Conversations in the library are also light and friendly. Students have not been echoing sentiments of years past such as “I’m gonna die if I don’t submit this right now” and “I’ve only had Redbull and gum in the last 48 hours” and “Would jumping from the third floor to the first floor mean I would sustain enough injury to get an extension?”. Instead, they seem to be hanging out in groups, passing around notes in a jolly fashion, and generally having a great time.
Anecdotally, this author’s colleagues and friends are doing great. They are already talking about future plans, instead of being stuck in the present stressful time (plans such as “What if I just left the country and never came back”, “Feminism isn’t that important, I’m just gonna marry rich”, and “I am going to drop out of university”). Society committee members have described that they “Can’t wait until this year is over”, presumably because they’re so excited for the spring exam season!
The darkness of a 3:30 sunset seems to only be providing more determination to students, who are not taking any naps, and are not flocking to web pages dedicated to Seasonal Affective Disorder in droves.
This author is sure that the muffled screams she hears as she edits this piece are those of joy and freedom at the prospect of having finished exams early and without any rush.
This is further evidence that all is well this year at the University of Aberdeen. What a pleasant surprise after years of stress. We must be doing something right! Happy exams!
