Pressure cooker. Suicide school.

Stressing out at Cornell is nothing new, and that’s part of the problem. Walk through any library and you’ll hear hoards of Cornellians complain about their work load with dark circles under their eyes, a triple shot expresso in one hand and a BlackBerry phone in the other, symbols of the lighting speed society in which we live.

But how much of that concern, worry and stress is actually helping us reach our goals? How much of that stress is really necessary in our lives? Worse, are faculty, administrators and students only exacerbating the problem by constantly stressing out?

Despite all of these negative implications, not all stress is bad. Stress is a natural process that results when your nervous system becomes aroused. Dr. Greg Eells, associate director of counseling and psychological services at Gannett, explained that stress motivates people to act, but there is an optimal level and if you become too stressed you become nonfunctional.

Research shows that when a person becomes too stressed, it actually hinders their performance. Catherine Thrasher-Carroll, mental health promotion coordinator, indicated that when stress starts to build up in students this leads to an imbalance, causing your mind and body to suffer. In particular, she singled out the practice of pulling an all-nighter.

“There is a commonly held belief that pulling an all-nighter is the way to get ahead, but research shows that sleep deprivation has the opposite effect. It is not conducive to remembering [material] you have studied. While your body rests, your brain doesn’t . . . It’s better to go ahead and get the sleep,” she said.

Though many students complain that they feel more stress than students at other colleges, the reality is that the level of stress perceived by Cornell students is comparable to other schools.

Dr. Tim Marchell ‘82, director of mental health initiatives, provided evidence from an anonymous survey called the National College Health Assessment. He said, “44 percent of Cornell students said that in the past year they had been so depressed that it had been difficult to function. That’s identical to the national average for college students.”

Dr. Janis Whitlock, project director of the Cornell research program on self-injurious behavior, explained, “There really wasn’t much perceived difference at all. It looked from our data that stress affects mental health because students come in with not enough capacity to cope with stress and it triggers mental health issues, but it doesn’t cause them.”

While Cornell may be exceptional in other regards, it seems this is a point where Cornell is just average. But is this really an area that Cornell students want to compete?

“The stress culture of Cornell is a long standing part of the student mindset. Alumni from the ’60s and ’70s have remarked that it was a tradition to try and outdo each other when talking about how many prelims and papers they had to deal with at once,” Marchell said.

Similarly, the suicide rate at Cornell is also consistent with the national average standing, at 7/100,000 per year. The Sun reported the last time an enrolled student committed suicide was in 2006. Last month, in the midst of prelim season, the Cornell community saw the suicide of Jakub Janecka ’98 when he jumped off a bridge in Collegetown.

There is some evidence to suggest that this generation of young adults is more stressed out than previous ones. Before the financial crisis even began, many students were concerned about finding jobs in an increasingly competitive global economy. That combined with increased parental expectations leads to heightened stress.

Prof. Bill Sonnenstuhl, director of graduate studies, specializes in organizational culture and indicated the environment as a whole, not just Cornell, is under a tremendous amount of stress due to the financial crisis. But he explained that students of this generation are experiencing more work-related stress than any generation in the past due to increased competition on a global scale.

“[Students] are working harder, juggling more responsibility and leadership roles that you are perceived to have to do to compete. 40 years ago it was much less stressful and [it] wasn’t as demanding,” said Sonnenstuhl.

Some of this work is stemming from a need to meet high parental expectations. Sonnenstuhl pointed out that parents have exceedingly higher expectations than previous generations of parents did. Parental expectations can especially be problematic in certain demographics where parents may not approve of their student’s major. Both students and some administrators noted in particular that many students of Asian descent often encounter difficulties in battling the model minority stereotype.

Transitioning from high school to college can be stressful for anyone, but Thrasher-Carroll and Marchell observed that in particular students from disadvantaged backgrounds, international students and students from urban areas often have more difficulty in adjusting to college life.

Another dramatic shift in generations that are more conducive to fostering a stressful environment is the loss of support systems. Families seldom have time to sit around the dinner table together as parents try to juggle careers and the kids’ various afterschool activities: soccer practice, piano lessons, SAT tutoring. All of these activities cut into family time. After children graduate high school, families become even more spread out as kids move away to attend college. At college, students may develop a small group of friends they interact with, but too often students become caught up in their lives to really look out for others.

In response to this trend, University President David Skorton in his convocation emphasized the need to develop a caring community, in which he urged people “to think about the person next to you, the person across the hall, the person in your class and to help us build an even more caring community.”

However, the advent of technology has in some degree conflated the ways in which people connect to one another. On the one hand, a person never has to be alone — he can simply call a person up at anytime as walks to and from class, the library, etc. On the other, what is a person giving up by constantly being connected to someone outside of their immediate surroundings all the time.

Not just that, but technology has to an extent exacerbated the stress people feel in their lives, because they can be reached anytime, anywhere, breaking down the boundary between the home and work life sphere, leaving little time for self-reflection.

Additionally, parents are using technology more than ever to stay connected to their kids by calling them everyday, which according to both Eells and Sonnenstuhl was unheard of even 10 years ago.

But Eells points to a larger problem with increased parental expectations and parental influence in college students’ lives. While traditional support networks may have gone by the wayside, this generation of college students has not experienced the same degree of unstructured down-time as prior generations did. Because students were enrolled in so many activities as kids growing up, they had less time to go outside and play and learn a crucial skill in life: negotiation.

Many problems result from this trend, namely students have difficulty negotiating issues with their roommates, friendships and romantic partners, all of which can be significant sources of stress. Eells said when the time comes that people want to form serious relationships, they do not necessarily have the skills to make those kind of negotiations and sacrifices that are required. Having less unstructured time also spills over into how people manage stress.

Part of the rise of the hook-up culture can in part be attributed to this phenomenon because students have sexual urges, but are unsure of how to pursue a relationship if they so desire.

But the first step to coping with stress is admitting and accepting you are stressed, Eells said.

Eells explained that people who are constantly connected via technology, outside obligations may not always take the time to slow down and reflect. When people do get the chance to do this to think and reflect for the first time, this is where the anxiety sets in. Usually that points happens when a students settles into bed at night.

“I’ve had people come in to [CAPS] and say that is the scariest time of day,” he said. “But part of being human is wrestling with that anxiety.”

There are several groups on campus who are committed to helping students cope with stress and develop time-management skills including Empathy, Assistance & Referral Service and Cornell Minds Matter.

Alice Green, assistant dean of students and EARS advisor, explained counselors at EARS help students in distress by listening to them and then enabling them to think through their problems to find solutions within.

In these stressful times, Green noted, “The counseling room has been getting more and more use.”

Young Suh ’09, president of CMM, offered some tips to relax and de-stress. She said, “Getting out of this environment is helpful and cultivating a personal space with what you like. It’s important to admit you stress out and develop personal techniques [for coping].”

CMM holds several events through the year to teach students how to cope with stress and provide them with relaxation techniques to help alleviate some of anxiety that plagues students.

Many faculty, students and administrators asserted the need for all members of the Cornell community to foster knowledge on how to take care of one’s self and create time for reflection opportunities.

Whitlock observed, “We need to focus on how do we build student skills to help them understand when it’s time to say ‘No. I don’t want to compete like that. I want to be sane.’”

Suh called on administrators and faculty to be more understanding of mental health and illness-related issues that affect students due to their high prevalence on campus. She described that professors are not immune from the culture of stress on Cornell’s campus either.

Utilization of Gannett’s service has increased by 63 percent in the last few years, according to an article in The Sun published in 2004. But part of the increase could be due to the decreasing stigma surrounding mental health issues and more students feel it is okay to seek out help.

If students are feeling particularly stressed out, they do have the option of taking a voluntary health leave of absence, more commonly known as a medical leave of absence.

Junior Emma Doody, a member of Cornell Minds Matter, took a medical leave of absence for reasons unrelated to stress and noted that the administration does make a conscientious effort to help students with their decision to leave.

Since returning to Cornell, Doody has observed more opportunities sponsored by Cornell to reduce stress and more workshops.

“There’s definitely a heightened awareness,” she said.

But not all students believe Cornell is a pressure cooker waiting to explode. Marc Campasano ’11 thinks students at Cornell overhype the pervasive presence of extreme stress in their lives. But he believes stress can be a very real problem for some students.

“I have a friend in engineering who has to take 24 credits because her school did not offer APs. I never see her … she’s always in the library,” he said.

Stuart Craig ’10 believes that students at Cornell grossly exaggerate the amount of stress present in their lives. “I really don’t think Cornell is that difficult. The amount of work I have here is similar to the workload I had my freshman year at the state college I transferred from. I feel like that since people are here, they feel they are entitled to complain about it.”

One anonymous student countered, “The amount of stress an average Cornell student suffers from is in no way comparable to other environments where there isn’t such a pressure cooker [atmosphere], such as schools with a more favorable grading system and curve.”

Whatever your feelings about stress at Cornell or your personal stressors, there are myriad programs in place to help students deal with the feeling. And in the end, if you’re so stressed out that you’re seeing backwards, it’s not all negative — as one student pointed out, stressed is just desserts spelled backward.