Graduate School Can Have Terrible Effects on People's Mental Health

By Alia Wong

∷楊小荷 選注

1. gung ho： 起勁的，狂熱的。

2.“我輟學了，”他解釋道。他將這一決定歸結為許多不同的因素，其中很多與學業(yè)并不直接相關，但都與博士項目中林林總總、難以擺脫的壓力息息相關。allencompassing： 包羅萬象的。

3. stressor： 導致緊張（焦慮）的事物。

4. resonate： 發(fā)出回響，產生共鳴。

5. 追求博士學位的過程通常工作繁重，而酬勞卻微乎其微，隨之而來的是睡眠不足和社交缺乏。

6. notorious： 臭名昭著的； hierarchy：等級制度，分級體系；academia：學術界；tribalism： 部落制度，此處指拉幫結派。

“I was always gung ho1about going to graduate school for some reason,” ref l ects Everet Rummel, a data analyst at the City University of New York. “That was naive.”

Rummel was indeed gung ho, embarking on a doctoral program in economics immediately after completing both his bachelor's and master's degrees in just four years. He was only 22 years old. And Rummel was indeed naive, at least in his own telling of his plans.That plan—which for the average doctoral candidate takes roughly eight years—ended quickly, not because of Rummel's characteristic eきciency but because he never completed it. “I dropped out,” he explains, attributing the decision to a lot of diあerent factors, many of them not directly related to his studies, but each pointing back to the all-encompassing, unforgiving stress of his Ph.D. program.2One major stressor3, he says, was the requirement that all fi rstyear Ph.D. economics students take the same three courses. But other major stressors are likely to resonate4with graduate students in all kinds of disciplines. The doctoral-degree experience often consists of intense labor expectations for little pay and a resulting lack of sleep and social life.5In addition, there is the notorious hierarchy of academia, which often promotes power struggles and tribalism.6

上學的時候，老師們常說：世界上沒有比讀書更容易的事情了。然而對那些正在攻讀博士學位的人來說，讀書，讓他們喪失了休閑娛樂的時間，讓他們在貧困線的邊緣掙扎，讓他們不斷質疑自己對社會的意義，也讓他們因此忍受著更大的精神壓力。

To make matters worse, the payoあ for all that stress may be wanting:7A 2014 report found that nearly 40 percent of the doctoral students surveyed hadn't secured a job at the time of graduation.What's more, roughly 13 percent of Ph.D. recipients graduate with more than $70,000 in education-related debt, though in the humanities the percentage is about twice that. And for those who do secure an academic post, census data suggest that close to a third of part-time university faculty—many of whom are graduate students—live near or below the poverty line.8

A new study by a team of Harvard-aきliated9researchers highlights one of the consequences of these realities: Graduate students are disproportionately likely to struggle with mental-health issues. The researchers surveyed roughly 500 economics Ph.D.candidates at eight elite universities, and found that 18 percent of them experienced moderate or severe symptoms of depression and anxiety. That's more than three times the national average, according to the study. Roughly one in 10 students in the Harvard survey also reported having suicidal thoughts on at least several days within the prior two weeks. (Other recent studies have had similar fi ndings,including one published earlier this year that described graduatestudent mental health as a “crisis.”)

7. payoff： 結果，報償；wanting：不令人滿意的，不合要求的。

8. post： 職位，職務；census data：人口普查數據；poverty line：貧困線。

9. Harvard-aff i liated： 隸屬于哈佛大學的。

10. exacerbate： 使惡化，使加劇。

11. digital literacy： 數位素養(yǎng)，即運用電腦及網絡資源來搜集、評估、整合數據信息的能力。

12. rigorous： 嚴格的，嚴厲的。

13. take out loans： 申請貸款。

14. under the guise of...： 在……的偽裝之下。文中指這些繁重的工作是掩藏在“專業(yè)化”的偽裝之下的。

The study's results, which also include survey responses from nearly 200 faculty members, indicate that many Ph.D. students' mental-health troubles are exacerbated10, if not caused, by their graduateeducation experiences. Roughly half of the respondents in the Harvard study with anxiety and/or depression had been diagnosed sometime after starting their graduate studies.And students toward the end of their programs were far more likely than those who were just embarking on their graduate journeys to report severe symptoms of anxiety or depression.

Graduate students cite the combination of fi nancial and professional pressures as a signif i cant challenge. Lucy Johnson,an assistant professor of digital literacies11at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, says that the fi nancial burdens of her Ph.D. studies made it diきcult for her to “escape the graduate curriculum”—by, say, seeing a movie or going out for dinner.Students who already feel isolated by their rigorous12academic work are bound to feel even more isolated by their fi nancial troubles, she suggests. Like many of her peers, Johnson eventually took out loans13to support herself.

And then there is the academic pressure itself. Graduate education relies on “this idea that we have to produce,produce, produce, or do a lot more labor than others, so we're worn quite thin,” says Johnson, noting that such labor is often promoted under the guise of14“professionalization.” “I think it's something we're just supposed to accept as being part of the process.”

Similarly, Rummel—who had long daydreamed of becoming a professor, drawn to the promise of tenure and the prospect of conferences where he could discuss many topics ad nauseam with like-minded “nerds”—says that he and his peers were expected to treat their doctoral education as a “rite of passage.”15“To get that life, you have to pay your dues16—and then some,” says Rummel, who's now 25. “It's accepted that you're supposed to hate your life for a long time.” His school made some eあort to ameliorate17students' stress—hosting events on self-care, for example, and oあering free massages during fi nalexam weeks. “But no one,” he adds, “has time for that.”

Compounding18the pressures is the sense, at least according to the economics Ph.D. candidates surveyed by the Harvard researchers, that their work isn't useful or benef i cial to society.Only a quarter of the study's respondents reported feeling as if their work was useful always or most of the time, compared with 63 percent of the entire working-age population. Only a fi fth of the respondents thought that they had opportunities to make a positive impact on their community.

Regardless, relatively few study participants reported receiving regular mental-health treatment—including just one in four of the respondents who'd experienced suicidal thoughts.And perhaps most tellingly, the graduate students in the study who scored worse than average on a mental-health assessment tended to think that their mental health was better than average. Among those who reported that they recently had suicidal thoughts, 26 percent assumed that their psychological well-being was better than the norm. This dissonance hints at the ubiquity of the problem19—the widespread acceptance of poor mental health as a fact of life in graduate education.

15. 同樣，在拉梅爾這樣一心想當教授的人看來——他沉浸在獲得終身教職的憧憬之中，想象著自己在會議上和書呆子同僚們令人可笑地探討許多主題——博士階段對于他和他的同事來說就是一個過渡儀式。tenure： 終身教職；ad nauseam： 討厭地，令人可笑地；rite of passage： 一般指個體從一個群體中離開，進入另一個群體的儀式，比如成年禮、婚禮等。

16. pay one's dues：〈美俚〉經受苦難，取得經驗。

17. ameliorate： 改善，減輕。

18. compound： 使惡化，使加重。

19. dissonance： 不和諧；ubiquity：無處不在，普遍存在。