By Nash Turley
Inside Higher Ed - October 7, 2013
In recognition of Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW), GradHacker will be publishing articles on Graduate Students' Mental Health all this week. Want to join the conversation? Comment below or tweet using #ghmiaw.
Editorial Comment: This article was originally published on September 2, 2013 on Nash Turley's blog and is republished here in its entirety. Nash
Turley is a Guest Author at GradHacker who is currently a PhD Candidate
studying evolutionary ecology at the University of Toronto. You can
follow Nash on twitter at @NashTurley and on his blog at nashturley.org.
There is an abundance of comics and writings online that poke fun at the
tortured graduate students, anxious and overwhelmed, complaining about
grading and research and the next frightful meeting with their advisor
(e.g. PhD comics and this recent buzzfeed post).
Graduate students consume and propagate these memes because, oh! how we
can relate, and oh! how easy it is to make fun of people with emotional
problems. And those outside the graduate school loop seem confused why
grad students are so sensitive and mentally unstable. As these ideas
migrate across the Internet and across our hallways I worry our
collective community is masking its real concerns about mental health
behind laughter.
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