CHOUNG | The Sunday Scaries 

Officially, the term is referred to as the “Sunday Scaries:” “feelings of anxiety or dread that happen the day before heading back to work.” These feelings often are associated with burnout and can stem from an unhealthy work-life balance. 

JOKHAI | If You Think Cornell Doesn’t Care About Your Mental Health, It’s Because It Didn’t Plan To

Throughout all these crises, the idea of being “the campus on the hill,” separate and safe from the dangers of the rest of the world, seemed to many students as a farce. It would appear as though Cornell doesn’t address the student deaths as a collective event that continuously impacts the student body morale; the numbers of lost students have not been made readily accessible to the public prior to Do Better Cornell’s statement, which only adds to the atmosphere of secrecy and fear. Throughout all these examples of anxiety-inducing events, there has existed a surreal amount of dissonance between the Cornell administration’s attitudes, those of its faculty and those of its students.

DERY | Bring Back Recess

Picture this: It’s 10:55 a.m., which means that the end of your third Tuesday lecture is only five minutes away. You’ve processed maybe 30% of the information thrown at you this morning. Maybe. All the content is scribbled down somewhere in your notebook anyway; you’ll get to it later, but definitely before your test on Friday (right?). “It’s going to be one of those weeks, huh?” you think to yourself. Your leg starts twitching. This time, though, it’s not from the stress. 

EDITORIAL | Safe Socializing for Mental Health

Now that campus has returned to alert level green, it might be tempting to forget what moved Cornell to yellow in the first place. In a Feb. 5 email, President Martha Pollack attributed the pre-semester spike to a Collegetown party where several members of Greek life organizations were reportedly present and not following COVID-19 protocols. The actions of these students not only violated the behavioral compact, but were also incredibly selfish. However, Greek life represents a microcosm, albeit a rather extreme one, of how the entire student body feels.

GUEST ROOM | Cornell: A Caring Community?

When I first visited Cornell, I was unreasonably concerned with questions like how similar this school is to Hogwarts. Is Beebe Lake like the Black Lake? Where is the Harry Potter dining hall? Or the Harry Potter library? Looking back, I should have been more concerned with questions like, how well is the student health center rated?

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Sometimes Understanding Is Not Enough

To the Editor:

A recent column titled “Why I’m Choosing Not To Seek Professional Mental Health Care” worried me greatly. I respect the writer’s ability to make her own choices, but I am writing to disagree vehemently with the article’s argument that lack of personal responsibility is the cause of mental illness. In ambiguously referencing “mental health” without defining her usage of the term, the author failed to make the distinction between transient mental health struggles, such as being stressed at one point, and an ongoing chronic disease, such as generalized anxiety, depression or seasonal affective disorder. There is a difference here, and it’s not negligible. The article suggests that things like “a call, an emptied afternoon” are all that she has needed in the past to restore balance to her mental health — and it’s great that she is coming to that realization.

LIM | Why I’m Choosing Not to Seek Professional Mental Health Care

A well-meaning friend recently responded to my apology with an invitation to try going on antidepressants. After I politely declined, he insisted that it worked wonders for him and suggested I really think about it again. And so I have, and I stand by my initial position. I am accountable for my own mental wellness. Me not opting for professional help means I do not want to outsource the work I know I have cut out for me; it is not my refusal to admit a problem.