By Maggie Burch
Nora Tocheny, a first-year Westhampton College student, said she felt the need to keep up appearances during her first semester of college.
“As a freshman,” she said, “you want to come in always happy, always willing to meet people.”
Tocheny felt as though she should always try to keep a positive attitude, even though she knew coming in to college that there would be times “when things are gonna be hard.”
She has not even taken her first college exams, though. “It’s the anticipation of the stress that’s really getting to me now,” she said.
Even though there is a general consensus about the stressful aspects of college for everyone – from moving in and making friends to final exams – why did Tocheny think she should not show any anxiety she might be feeling?
This aspect of college life has created a stigma of perfectionism present on the University of Richmond campus that has resulted in more negative effects for women than men, such as higher self-reported levels of stress.
The unbalanced results of striving for perfection have led to a gender gap concerning the emotional health and well-being of students on campus.
The people Tocheny was trying to impress included some of her new friends at Richmond. Tocheny admitted that it was difficult at first to confide in new friends.
She said that moving in and meeting new people was stressful, so she found herself often turning to her best friend from home. “She was going through the same thing. It was definitely easier talking to her,” Tocheny said.
In accordance with Tocheny’s desire to appear happy, the perception students have of one another might be more important than the reality of other students’ lives.
When asked how her female friends’ and her own levels of stress compared to those of their male friends, Tocheny did not think they compared.
“They’re a little more worried about the partying,” she said.
To Tocheny, it did not seem as though the male students she knows were as stressed academically.
Opposite of that opinion is Dan Kelly, a Richmond College sophomore.
When asked whether he perceived his female peers to be more stressed than he and his male friends, Kelly sincerely asked, “Why would they be more stressed?”
Kelly said he believed his academic demands to be equal to those of any female or male student taking a normal course load at Richmond.
Allie Miller, a senior and president of Westhampton College Government Association, is another woman who believes the men she knows are much less stressed than she and the women she is around.
“Maybe they have worries and some anxieties about the future,” Miller said of her male friends, “but it doesn’t seem to me that they would describe it as stress.”
One reason women may believe the men on Richmond’s campus are less stressed than they are is that the men are less vocal about the stress they experience.
Peter LeViness, the director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Richmond, said that men tend to not vocalize their feelings of anxiety or distress.
LeViness said, “Many men are socialized not to ask for help, not to be vulnerable, to always be in control, and always tough it out.”
Kelly described the reality of LeViness’ belief. “If you go sit down at the lunch table and start complaining about how much work you have,” he said, “then everyone is just going to call you a girl and tell you that they have the same pressure.”
In addition to agreeing with Kelly’s comments on men keeping feelings to themselves, Eric D’Agostino, another Richmond College sophomore, also said he believed that women were more likely to vocalize their stress.
“You’re more likely to see a girl running around, being like, ‘I’m so stressed! I have all this work to do,’ than you would see a guy doing that,” D’Agostino said.
This idea of men suppressing their feelings correlates with the number of men seeking help at CAPS compared to the number of women, according to LeViness. 65 percent of students coming to CAPS are women.
“There is greater incidence of some issues in women than in men,” LeViness said, “but also, women are more likely to seek help than men.”
Along with being more willing to ask for help from a professional, women are also more likely to confide in other women, according to LeViness.
Confiding in others is not always a successful stress-reliever, however. LeViness said that mutual complaining, or co-rumination, can detract from the well-being of all of those involved.
“If it leads them to say, ‘What can we do about it?’ that could be positive,” he said.
Miller said she and her friends had learned to try to balance talking about the stress they were experiencing with discussions of how to move beyond the stress, or to handle it better.
“Last year, my roommate and I would talk about our stress all the time,” Miller said, “and it almost became negative, so this year we’ve been so much better about, like, designated time.”
Many of the studies conducted by CAPS provide statistics to support the gender gap in many psychological aspects of life for men and women at Richmond.
In a 2006 survey assessing the mental health needs of first- and second- year students, women reported a higher frequency of concern by 10 percent or more in the following areas: difficulty coping with high anxiety during tests; feeling anxious, tense, or worried; feeling overwhelmed by all the academic work I have; concerns about my physical appearance; and difficulty coping with perfectionistic tendencies.
In the same study, men reported a significantly higher frequency of concern than women in two areas: getting drunk and having low motivation for academic work.
Both of these areas were relevant to Kelly. “I think the way that I relieve stress is the weekend, and drinking alcohol, to be quite honest,” he said.
Kelly also said that any motivation he did have to do schoolwork could be easily dissuaded by an opportunity to socialize with friends. Compared to high school, he said, the social pressure in college is much greater.
“There are so many people trying to distract you actively,” Kelly said. “It’s hard to keep focused with people around you who are trying to bring you down.”
It is difficult to turn down opportunities to spend time with your friends at college, especially during your first year, when finding close friends is so important. Juliette Landphair, dean of Westhampton College, said, “It’s stressful for any student – the pressure to make new friends. They’re feeling like they’re the only ones here.”
Tocheny noted this pressure during the first few days of orientation.
“It was definitely weird being so far from home and making friends,” she said, “at the same time, everyone is in the same boat.”
Landphair also noted that women have a harder time going far away from home than men do. “The family tends to be a little more protective of the female students than male students,” she said.
In the long term, however, Landphair says the experience away from home has proven to be beneficial for women. “The further female students go away from home,” she said, “the more – over the span of their college experience – the more self-confident they are.”
Richmond students are agreeably go-getters, over achievers. Academics were important in high school to students, and a selective university such as this is typically only a good match for those willing to take on a challenging workload.
When recalling her own college experience at Tulane University in New Orleans, Landphair said the stresses she did experienced there could not compare to what she understood to be typical now.
“I napped almost every day,” she said. “College was just this big, kind of relaxation thing for me.”
Landphair is particularly interested in the lifestyle of Westhampton women, and she has done research and has had an article published about the stigma of perfectionism among college-aged women.
In her 2007 article “Never Perfect Enough: The Private Struggles of College Women,” Landphair discusses the idea of “‘effortless perfection’: the expectation that one would be smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful and popular, and that all this would happen without visible effort.”
LeViness also noted the relevance of the pressure on college-aged women to be perfect. “It’s like trying to be super, super excellent at everything that they’re doing,” he said. “Sometimes when they’re listing all the things they’re involved in, I start feeling stressed. Human beings have limits, and most of us can’t juggle that many things.”
In the 2006 CAPS study mentioned above, 38.5 percent of women reported frequently having concerns about the difficulty of coping with perfectionistic tendencies, compared with 20 perent of men.
Kerry Boland, a Westhampton College sophomore, said that most of the pressure she fel to succeed was self-imposed, but also that part of Richmond’s atmosphere encouraged hard work.
“I feel like there’s also kind of – especially at Richmond – a kind of pressure, because everyone is doing so many different things,” Boland said.
Miller agreed, saying, “I think Richmond attracts students who want to do well, so students strive to do well regardless.”
Landphair also referred to Richmond as a selective university whose students have been over-achievers in their lives up to this point, and expect to do just as well in college.
For females, Landphair said, “There’s the pressure that they feel – self-imposed or outside-imposed – to do well. There’s the academic stress and pressure.
“There’s the physical pressure to look – weight-wise and face-wise and dress-wise – a certain way. There’s the stress of ‘what is my life going to be after I graduate?’ The seniors are starting to feel that anxiety.”
Statements such as these by Landphair, and statistics such as those gathered by CAPS make it appear as if Richmond women actually are harboring more stress and anxiety than their male counterparts.
But, as Kelly said, women are essentially facing the same academic pressures as men, so why should they be any more stressed?
For women, it might be more than simply academics causing the stress in their lives.
Kelly said she believed there was more of an expectation for girls to be perfect than guys. “I think girls are expected to be more perfect in every single area of their lives,” he said. “I don’t know any girl on this campus who would admit to having bad grades to anyone. Externally, it seems like girls are always on top of their stuff.”
LeViness said that the “stuff” women do is typically more demanding and more responsibility-driven than the things in which men are involved.
“It’s courses and double majors,” LeViness said, “student organizations and volunteering.”
Linda Sax, in her book “The Gender Gap in College,” concurs with this idea. She says being overwhelmed by responsibilities can affect both men and women, but it is a more significant source of stress for female students.
“This is likely due to the range of responsibilities that women undertake,” Sax says, “volunteering, participating in student clubs, fulfilling household commitments, studying – more frequently than do men.”
Miller said that her senior year had been exponentially more stressful than her past years at Richmond.
“I wouldn’t say that the activities themselves are stressful,” Miller said. “It’s just the lack of time that makes it stressful.” Miller is also in charge of all of the finances for her sorority.
The way men comparatively spend their non-academic, leisure time might be the key to their lower, self-reported levels of stress.
“Men are more likely to build (into their days) things like video games or athletics,” LeViness said. “You could think of those as time wasters, but I also think of them as stress relievers.”
Landphair concurred and has her experience as dean to back up those ideas. “Women students don’t deal with stress very well,” she said. “Male college students, they veg out more, they go throw the Frisbee.”
Kelly credits playing video games as an effective, short-lived distraction from schoolwork.
“I think it’s better if I play one game of FIFA and then get to my work,” he said, “than if I procrastinate on Facebook for three hours and then get to my work. It’s better to just completely forget about it for a little while, and then come back to it.”
Aside from video games, LeViness strongly advocates participating in some kind of physical activity. It is an important element contributing to students’ physical and emotional health.
He described from a psychological point of view why physical activity is important in times of stress. “It’s the flight or fight reaction,” he said of your body when experiencing stress and anxiety.
“Your body is being mobilized to take physical action,” he said, “but for most of our modern stresses, physical action isn’t an appropriate response.”
Unfortunately, even though students tend to know physical activity is beneficial for them, it is one of the first things students will sacrifice when they begin to feel swamped with responsibilities.
D’Agostino said that for most of this semester he had been able to go to the gym frequently, and that he recognized that exercising helped relieve stress; however, “in the past few weeks,” he said, “as the workload has increased, the first thing to cut is the gym.”
The other aspect of a healthy lifestyle that is not respected by college students is proper sleeping habits, LeViness said.
“I think college is the single-hardest time to regularize your sleep in any way, shape or form,” LeViness said, “ but the more you can get closer to that, the better you will feel.”
Something students might not expect is LeViness’ comparison of trying to do work on multiple nights of minimal sleep to trying to do work after drinking a six-pack of beer.
“Most people know that wouldn’t be a good idea, but they do that to themselves with sleep, yet that’s just as impairing,” LeViness said.
Landphair said that women didn’t deal with stress very well, except perhaps in the way it drove them to further push themselves.
“That’s why women are thriving academically compared to men,” she said; however, more concern for academics may lead to academic success, but it will not necessarily lead to a stress-free life.
In her book, Sax says, “One thing is clear: the more time students spend trying to meet academic demands does not reduce the pressure they feel to meet those commitments.”