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

By Alia Wong

∷杨小荷 选注

1. gung ho： 起劲的，狂热的。

2.“我辍学了，”他解释道。他将这一决定归结为许多不同的因素，其中很多与学业并不直接相关，但都与博士项目中林林总总、难以摆脱的压力息息相关。allencompassing： 包罗万象的。

3. stressor： 导致紧张（焦虑）的事物。

4. resonate： 发出回响，产生共鸣。

5. 追求博士学位的过程通常工作繁重，而酬劳却微乎其微，随之而来的是睡眠不足和社交缺乏。

6. notorious： 臭名昭著的； hierarchy：等级制度，分级体系；academia：学术界；tribalism： 部落制度，此处指拉帮结派。

“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

上学的时候，老师们常说：世界上没有比读书更容易的事情了。然而对那些正在攻读博士学位的人来说，读书，让他们丧失了休闲娱乐的时间，让他们在贫困线的边缘挣扎，让他们不断质疑自己对社会的意义，也让他们因此忍受着更大的精神压力。

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： 结果，报偿；wanting：不令人满意的，不合要求的。

8. post： 职位，职务；census data：人口普查数据；poverty line：贫困线。

9. Harvard-aff i liated： 隶属于哈佛大学的。

10. exacerbate： 使恶化，使加剧。

11. digital literacy： 数位素养，即运用电脑及网络资源来搜集、评估、整合数据信息的能力。

12. rigorous： 严格的，严厉的。

13. take out loans： 申请贷款。

14. under the guise of...： 在……的伪装之下。文中指这些繁重的工作是掩藏在“专业化”的伪装之下的。

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. 同样，在拉梅尔这样一心想当教授的人看来——他沉浸在获得终身教职的憧憬之中，想象着自己在会议上和书呆子同僚们令人可笑地探讨许多主题——博士阶段对于他和他的同事来说就是一个过渡仪式。tenure： 终身教职；ad nauseam： 讨厌地，令人可笑地；rite of passage： 一般指个体从一个群体中离开，进入另一个群体的仪式，比如成年礼、婚礼等。

16. pay one's dues：〈美俚〉经受苦难，取得经验。

17. ameliorate： 改善，减轻。

18. compound： 使恶化，使加重。

19. dissonance： 不和谐；ubiquity：无处不在，普遍存在。