What Do You Make of the Campus Crisis?
Do you find yourself barely getting by at university? Is it a struggle bearing the load of financial pressures and expectations from family and friends? Turns out, you are not alone.
I was recently reading the cover article of Maclean’s September 10th issue entitled “Campus crisis: the broken generation. Why so many of our best and brightest students report feeling hopeless, depressed, even suicidal”. The article spoke of a growing epidemic of university students all across Canada, and in the US, experiencing increasing amounts of stress. The list of reasons included moving away from home, academic demands, social pressures, parents’ expectations, and a looming recognition of the tough job market. A 2011 survey of 1,600 University of Alberta students showed that about 51 per cent reported that, within the past 12 months, they’d “felt things were hopeless,” and over half felt, “overwhelming anxiety.”
I’m feeling the pressure myself. It sometimes seems that my life is traveling the opposite way on an escalator. I am carrying a part-time job while balancing full-time studies, and a relationship with my wife. If I let things slide one day; I’ll be two days behind. Yet there are many students who I am sure have it worse than me. The home situation, the finances, the homework, the uncertainty; you know what I mean. More than this it seems that as students we can make our lives so busy that as the Maclean’s article says, “introspection is in short supply”. From “texting, listening to music, checking Facebook or Twitter, often all at once, there’s no time to mull over difficult, complicated emotions.”
With all that is on our plates, how do we cope? Even more than this, where do we find hope? We can try and cope by applying more willpower. We can clench our teeth and bear the load of doing it all our self; hoping that class mark comes back 90 or up, hoping that our parents will back off and that somehow everything will turn out okay. But will that really resolve the stress? After our consuming classes comes a tight job race, and a job offer opens up an endless treadmill of chasing a career while keeping tabs on all your competing colleagues. Add to this increasing family, social, and time pressures and we will find ourselves at the end of our strength.
We need help from outside of us. Sheer willpower won’t give us the progress or the rest we so deeply desire. But here’s the objection, I know because I’ve said it myself; “No one can take care of me but myself!” Well, how is that working for you? How’s that working for me? The challenge is that we can’t see anyone big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to care for us better than we can.
But suppose that there is someone whose love is extravagant, whose power is limitless, and whose greatest concern is that we find ultimate rest? There is One who is this way and He came to free us from the wheel of endless defeat, give us a life full of joy, and give us rest. He says: “Come to Me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.”
Who can do this? Not I. Not you. But there is One who has come from heaven to earth to meet us where we are at, to bring us the rest we could never imagine with the love that we never knew possible. Jesus is His name. Have you met Him? Why not ask Him right now to invade your life and experience His love, goodness and rest?
What do you make of the campus crisis? What do you think is the answer? Let me know in the comments.
Related: Escape, Breaking Down and Wondering Why, Keshan’s Story
Tags: campus, college, crisis, Eric Nielsen, LIFE
I know exactly what you are talking about Eric. I remember being on a soccer field with some friends and realizing that playing soccer or hockey was actually the only thing I truly enjoyed in my life. I was totally disgusted of all the stress I was into. Working hard at school to make myself worthy of working hard for some other boss later for the rest of my life, until I was too old to actually enjoy life. What a NONSENSE!
@ Jacques one of the things I have discovered in my life is that God will use our passion in life to share about him. I am not sure if your just starting out in the workforce or have been working for many years! I recently watched a message where it talked about people who God used under forty Timothy in the New Testament was under forty! Then he talked about people who were over forty and God used people such as Moses, Abraham, Caleb. It does not matter what stage in life you are at the MOST important thing in life is to surrender to Christ as when we surrender to him he will give us Joy and show us what path we are to go down. When we surrender by first accepting Christ then by following his will our life will be joyful!
I am in the category of the over forty and although I accepted Christ early in my life I did not truly follow him. Thank God for his grace as over the past two years God has begun to bless me and I know he has many other things in store for me however not until you give up and give God control in life you will always feel sad and depressed. God does not change the situation however he does give you the wisdom and strength through the Holy Spirit to deal with the situation and gives you JOY doing so!!
God Bless
Hey Jacques, thanks for sharing. Playing basketball was my joy in school. I was shooting for the NBA before reality set in. Although not abandoning basketball, I found other things I really liked.
I’m curious, what happened next when you had that fork in the road between soccer and your career path?
@Eric Well I’ve never been that much of an athlete. I had a passion for hockey, and liked soccer too but I was not thinking about the NHL. I just liked to be outside with friends, playing hard on a competitive game but without the pressure of something really serious.
I think that in those days I was kind of depressed whenever I was in school. I changed the program I was in later, but I think that the main issue was that I had no idea why I was doing all that.
@Andrew I did rededicate my life to God in the middle of my university years. Or maybe the best way to describe it would be that I tried to be religious again but failed, and then I cried to him and he grabbed me back. He slowly brought back work ethic in my life and became the reason why I was doing anything. I was craving for a meaning for my life and found out a father of love.
That article definitely brought me back in those year when all I was seeing for my future was work work work for my house in my suburb, traffic, TV, video games and sleep. In the same system as everyone else, trying to forget that I’m meaningless. No wonder students feel hopeless.