According to the slew of Facebook status updates on my news feed last Tuesday night, almost all of my friends were at or were going home for Thanksgiving break. So why was I still sitting in my dorm? Oh right, I go to Georgetown.
At Georgetown, vacations are apparently associated with laziness and a poor work ethic – why else would our fall semester schedule subject us to three months of classes without a break? Granted, we had Columbus Day off, but I think it’s safe to say that many students, out of necessity, put off work until that Monday, and the holiday was largely devoted to a game of catch-up. In chatting with friends attending other universities, I have noticed that many returned home for fall break – a short vacation in mid-October, comparable in length to our Thanksgiving break. Most other schools were also off on Veterans’ Day and Election Day. Jane and Joe Hoya, however, spent those days in the classroom, probably exhausted and perhaps struggling to stay awake. It’s pretty ironic that Georgetown, a premier university in the nation’s capital, doesn’t cancel classes on national holidays – especially ones that promote active citizenship and show gratitude for U.S. troops.
For college freshmen like me, the Thanksgiving break is often the first trip home since August. And all students, under- and upperclassmen alike, gradually “burn out” after several months of continuous college demands, including juggling classes, going to club meetings and dealing with roommate issues. College is stressful; Georgetown students should not have to hang on to their sanity for as long as they do before being able to collapse at home in a blur of turkey, sleep, catching up with old friends and more turkey. Many students with particularly unfortunate situations spend a significant portion of their limited vacation time doing work for the classes they will return to in a few days. It’s a wonder college students are sane at all.
The body is actually designed to respond to stress, and normal levels keep us alert and out of danger. When the stress becomes continual or extreme, however, problems arise. Unsurprisingly, some of the first effects of stress are a lack of energy, concentration problems and anxiety. But recent neurological studies have correlated more troubling and permanent effects with chronic stress. Nuno Sousa and his colleagues at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal found that chronically stressed rats reverted to habit-based actions rather than engaging in decision-making processes. Moreover, these habit-based actions were often the cause of more stress, creating a vicious, self-defeating cycle. Sousa and his team also discovered that the behavior was linked to neural circuitry: Regions of the brain responsible for habit formation had increased activity, while areas associated with executive control and higher-order decision making were shriveled. The rats became neurologically predisposed to repeating the same actions over and over again.
Although rats and human brains are not identical, these results imply serious neurological issues related to stress in humans. In both rats and humans, chronic stress reduces the brain’s cellular plasticity – or the creation of new neurons. This means that whether you are a simple lab rat or a sleep-deprived freshman, severe stress can land you in a self-defeating cycle, which could conceivably lead to further health complications or chronic conditions such as depression. I doubt the Georgetown administration took neural plasticity into account when planning the academic year schedule.
Sousa and his team also observed the effect of an extended vacation on the extremely stressed rodents. After a four-week break following four weeks of constant stress, the rats had returned to their normal selves, able to move beyond their old habits. While the researchers didn’t test varying “vacation” periods, it’s safe to say that in order for the break to be effective in remedying chronic stress, it must be of a significant length relative to the stress period. In other words, the rest must match the pain, or at least compensate fully for it.
The university needs to consider a vacation schedule that breaks up our current, arduous stretch of fall semester craziness. Perhaps a three-to-four day breather in late October or early November would be appropriate. Or even some single off-days dispersed throughout the semester. Either way, a change in the schedule is vital to the health of the student body. Our brains will be better for it.
Caitlin Gilbert is a freshman in the College and a contributor to The Hoya.
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