![]() We can, of course, try and manage the effects of acute disruption - but most of us are still anxious all the time, insecure all the time, lack any real power to change our environment. But the primary responsibility to ensure our own comfort is misdirected in a situation of structural anxiety, and our anxiety is further fuelled by the ‘self-’help’ idea that we should be able to make ourselves feel better. ![]() A lot has been written by now on the co-option of ‘self-care’ for marketing purposes into another iteration of individual responsibility. In this case, an exclusive focus on individual comfort is both nihilistic and futile. Competition is when you can rely on nobody but yourself anxiety is when, for the vast majority of people, all available options are only getting worse, and in our isolation there’s nothing we can do about it.Įvery moment infused with the need to reduce the opportunity cost of making the decision to come here This is a capitalist anxiety, borne of the increasingly acute feeling that ultimately we’re all alone. We have a personal responsibility to take whatever we can get, and at least get what we paid for - so cross the picket line, do what you want, you deserve it. Every moment becomes infused with the need to reduce the opportunity cost of making the decision to come here. ![]() ![]() When higher education is instrumentalised as an economic investment, and when social safety nets have been continuously eroded for a decade, there are real reasons for us to feel anxious or scared. But if we’re talking about a student mental health crisis, or an epidemic of anxiety sweeping across the nation, it would be strange to discount structural causes. Of course there is anxiety that’s maladaptive or pathological I, for one, am trying to stop assuming that everyone I know secretly despises me. At its root, anxiety is a combination of uncertainty and fear: the possibility that something disastrous might happen, and dread at the potential consequences. This is not a licence to divest all responsibility, but a call to understand ourselves in structural context. It’s a foundational neoliberal myth that everything you feel and every action you take are signifiers of your worth and your worth alone. The story of individual success is another story about anxiety. I spent most of three years learning that if you want to get by, it’s probably best just to put some of them down Cambridge does give you a lot that you feel like you have to hold. ![]() I won’t pretend to have first-hand experience of it all, but I do recognise the anxiety that a lot of students must be feeling - that everything you’re just barely holding is bound to slip right out of your grasp, and maybe the strikes will knock it right out. Funnily enough, ‘disruption’ is probably the one word I’d use to characterise my entire time here. So I’ve found it quite bemusing that with the strikes came a deluge of students talking about mental health, welfare, and disability - that the disruption of industrial action is condemnable particularly where it compromises the wellbeing of people like me. Content note: This article contains discussion of anxiety.Īs a student with ADHD and a generally chaotic mind, I’ve unfortunately missed a lot of lectures in my life I haven’t exactly abided by the prescribed timetable of essays and supervisions either. ![]()
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