Health in general, whether it’s mental/ physical or a combination of both, I think  is extremely important to have and lacking these can cause a lot of problems within our mind bodies. While talking to all five of these college students about mental and physical health, the word “college” was brought up numerous times among every student. So then I began to ask the question, “How does the college lifestyle have an impact on your mental and physical health?” 

Melanie a freshman at Rowan answered this question by saying “The college lifestyle does affect both physical and mental traits of my wellbeing. In terms of affecting me physically, I don’t get all of my hours of sleep due to assignments, homework, and studying. This leads me to be drowsy all day and my attention span at a minimum. My mind feels as if it is filled up with knowledge all day which is a good thing but has its downfalls. These downfalls include stress, headaches and migraines. Mental effects include anxiety when it comes to homework, classwork, and tests. Due to all the classes and tons of assignments for each of them, it loads up and is very overwhelming.” 

Then I went on and asked two student athletes to see if the answers were similar. Gina, a sophomore at Rowan, answered by saying, “ Yes I think college affects my physical and mental health. For example my mental health is affected by worrying about time management and my physical health is affected because I am an athlete so I am always working out and at practice which is good for me but without the right time management I can get very tired and stressed.”

 Lastly, Carly, a freshman Rowan, answered by saying “ Yes there are so many other things that I would rather be doing than stressing myself out about homework. I would like to enjoy my time out of class to do what I like and not doing homework. It is already hard enough to go to school then do my homework in my free time, but once it becomes time for sports there is no time for anything else. Teachers have unreal expectations of what students can do in their free time especially when they have four or more classes and other responsibilities.”

Overall, all the students I asked ranged around all the same answers and with that being said, college has a huge impact and causes negative effects towards our mental and physical health.