DeStress Week at CEU

The CEU Weekly welcomes the initiative of the Student Life Office, Alumni Office, CEU Counselors, and of the Student Union, to put together an event that hopefully will take the edge off students’ busy schedule.

However, it seems that CEU students are affected by stress and tiredness throughout the whole academic year, not only during the final weeks of the semester. Also, it is true that there seem to be  some differences between CEU’s departments in terms of the workload that students have to endure, but ultimately all students, and perhaps some professors too, find themselves exhausted at some point.  Of course,  everyone has different mechanisms and strategies to cope with exhaustion, anxiety, and other “anomalies” produced by academic workload.  Some of these strategies might include a beer (or more), a good book,  dinner with friends, or even better, a  soviet style party at the Dorm.

Nonetheless, the University should be more concerned about the (mental) wellbeing of its students.  It is great to have a week dedicated to relaxing activities, but some might think that this is not enough. Perhaps, developing new quiet areas,  where students can relax a bit: preferably a place where the sunlight is allowed to come inside, where there’s no WiFi, and no squeaky voice that cries every five minutes: “pizza!” or “sandwich!”.  I understand that CEU has an urban campus, but perhaps the much awaited Campus Re-Development Plan will include the construction of some areas that are  more “people friendly”.  There are many areas in the current CEU buildings which are illuminated only artificially, regardless of the season (the laptop areas, a big part of the library, the gym and the computer labs are located in basements— places that students frequent most often). Also, I think that a WiFi free area would be great. Imagine a place where you cannot check any of your precious accounts on the Internet!

Bottom line, the perfect cure for stress and exhaustion contains more sunshine, less noise, and no technology.  Hopefully, someday you will be able to find all these things in a room somewhere at CEU.

Florin Zubascu