As I am finally coming to a close on my three months of research on mental health issues amongst college students, I wanted to do a little post to share why I believe depression awareness is so important in college. After researching the correlates of depression in college students and learning about the alarming increase of mental health illness rates, I now realize how urgent it is to spread awareness.

I know there may be a lot of you out there that think you would never have depression or that there is no way one of your friends has ever been depressed, but the truth is, it is a lot more common than you think. The stigma surrounding depression is real and it is time it ends.

Source: CCAA

Many people think that depression is something that you can just snap out of or that the its just an excuse to be lazy. In reality, depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain. In order for the person suffering to get better, they have to be treated and if they aren’t, it can get even worse. The problem with the stigma is that its causing students who are showing signs of depression to just brush them off. People are embarrassed to get help because they think that it will make them seem weak or unstable if they are diagnosed with a mental disorder. Unfortunately though, the ones who don’t end up getting treated might end up as the ones who commit suicide later on. This is why it is so important for us to end the stigma and show students that it is okay to not be okay.

If you are suffering from depression or any other mental illness, you are not alone. We need to all come together and support those in our community who are struggling. I truly believe that the only way we can fix this problem is if we all come together and work to promote mental heath and look after our peers. After spending so much time researching this topic, I have become dedicated to spreading awareness. I want to do my part in helping those with mental illnesses because I know what it is like to suffer and I never want anyone to go through it alone.

Source: nfmmc.org

Yesterday, my CTW class spent a day in the library learning how to integrate sources for our research paper. While this may sound like a boring post (I know), I actually learned some really helpful tools for integrating sources into your paper!

Source: The Office

Here are 3 useful tips I learned

1. Always research the periodical your source is coming from. This is really important to do because it can tell you a lot about what type of source it is and the biases they may come with it.
2. Always research the author. It is important to note who the author is and what they do in a research paper. Like the periodical, the author can tell you a lot about the source and how the authors profession or field of study makes the source credible.
3. If the information you discover from tips 1 & 2 are key components to understanding the background of your source, make sure to include that in your research. Sometimes I forget that this background information can actually say a lot about your source and if you do not include it, then the source can be interpreted in a completely different way than the author intended.

I know that integrating sources seems simple, but if you do not do it the correct way, it can completely change the interpretation of your argument. Make sure to always do background research on your sources and insure that you, and the readers of your paper, are aware of exactly what the source had intended you to take away from it. Your research should not stop after locating a source, it is extremely important to continue your research on the article itself.

I know it sounds tedious but I promise it will really help you out in the long run!

Back at the beginning of the quarter when I was starting to brainstorm what I should choose as a topic for my research paper, I wanted to choose a topic that meant something to me. Rather than just choosing something random to focus on for 3 months, I wanted to choose something that I could actually relate to and would be devoted to for the whole quarter. As most of you know, I ultimately chose to focus my research on mental health of college students however, you probably do not know why.

During my sophomore and junior years of high school, I struggled with depression. I was in a very dark place in my life and I was trying to hide and avoid the fact that I was suffering from a mental illness. After two long years of trying to fight it, with help from my family and friends, I was finally able to overcome this dark time in my life.

However, a few months after starting college this year, I felt the depression creeping back up on me. Once again, I tried to avoid it and pretend like I was fine, but the truth was, I needed help more than I ever did before. After about 6 months of the depression getting worse and worse, I finally got the courage to receive professional help. While I am still struggling, I am getting better each day and to my surprise, this research paper actually helped me to get through it.

My own personal experience inspired me to choose this topic for my research. It was so important to me to choose this because I knew that I wasn’t the only college student who has struggled with mental health issues. I really wanted to research more about this and find out why this is happening to not only myself, but so many other college students throughout the world. I wanted to find out how to stop this issue from affecting more students. The most important thing I wanted to accomplish was to educate myself through this research so that I could better understand the issue and use my knowledge to help others in advocating mental health on college campuses.

I know that through this research I am not going to make the problem go away, but I hope that it will give me the chance to educate, in the very least, one person on how important this issue is. Even if I only get through to a few people, I hope to make a difference in at least one student’s life so that they can prevent themselves from ever having to struggle with a mental health illness.

As I continue to gather sources for my research project on depression in college students, I am finding a gap in what I have gathered so far. While I have found some significant sources, I am noticing that many of these sources are only from psychologists, professors, or doctors. I do not have anything from college students themselves which is a major problem for my research… I have to find a way to fill this gap ASAP

I started to brainstorm yesterday and I decided to look up “college depression from the perspective of college students” on google. I hit the jackpot!

I found articles that were posted on twitter to help college students struggling with depression and I even found an article on buzzfeed.com titled “13 Powerful Stories About College Students Living With Depression”. This article was exactly what I needed to help me feel this gap in my research. It was really important for me to find sources from the perspective of college students because I don’t want my research to be only statistics and opinions from adults and experts in this field. I want to hear what it’s like for the students who actually suffer from mental illness because sometimes even the experts don’t know what it is really like for a college student today to live with a mental illness.

As far as establishing territory goes, I feel pretty confident with the sources I have collected so far. Since the majority of my sources are studies on depression and mental illness in college students, I have a lot of background I can use from these. I am nowhere near done collecting sources, however, now that I have established the gap, it will be much easier for me to find sources that can all contribute to the conversation.

I will keep you all updated on my research and let you know what I find!

In my CTW class we had to read an article titled “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively” written by Margaret Kantz. The article discusses Kinneavy’s rhetorical triangle. This rhetorical triangle consists the Encoder, Decoder, and Reality. The Encoder is the speaker/writer (ethos), the Decoder is the audience/reader (pathos), and Reality is the topic or content (logos).

Kantz talks about the need for students to use this rhetorical triangle in creating researched arguments. In the article, she creates the example of a student named Shirley who, like many students, misunderstands and misuses sources. Kantz lists three common causes that give students difficulty in creating an original argument.

1. Many students misunderstand sources because they read them as stories.
2. Many students expect their sources to tell the truth.
3. Many students do not understand that facts are a kind of claim that can be used persuasively to create an impression.

Source: Parks and Recreation

Basically what Kantz is trying to say is that students like Shirley only know how to learn the content and find the main idea of a source which only allows them to agree or disagree. This is not enough to create a persuasive argument. Kantz believes that Shirley needs to develop a technique that allows her to say more than just agree or disagree. She needs to find a technique that will help her develop more complex understandings and representations of the text so that she can analyze and build her own original argument.

In the past, I have been a lot like Shirley. I often just restate or summarize a source rather than adding to the conversation and complicating the argument. However, after reading this article, I realize how important it is, when writing a research paper, to do more than just agree or disagree with a source. It is so important to understand the context of the sources you are reading. Kantz discusses ways for students to overcome this issues. For example, when you are reading, you should be asking yourself questions like “who is the author?”, “who is the authors intended audience?”, and “what are you saying to help me with the problem you assume I have?”. These questions will help you to better understand the source you are reading so that later on you can better analyze and then compose your argument.

What I got of this article that I think is very helpful is that when writing an argument paper, sources are meant to analyzed in a way that adds to and complicates your argument. Sources are not just meant to be summarized. As I soon begin my researched argument paper, I am going to make sure that I do not make this mistake. The most important thing to do when reading and analyzing a source is to ask yourself those questions that help you understand the role of the Encoder, Decoder, and Reality so that you can fully understand the intentions of the source.

It may seem like a lot, but if you do this your paper will be amazing!

A few days ago, I learned how to use the databases in my university’s library. If you are like me, the only database you know how to use is Google (sad, I know). But, thanks to the librarian and the “Distinguishing Different Types of Articles” tutorial, I learned all about how to navigate the databases for my future research paper.

I had no idea how many databases there are to choose from. Libraries subscribe to thousands of databases that give access to millions of books, articles, studies, magazines, and almost any piece of writing you could think of. There are thousands of databases out there and each one is different. At the SCU library, there are databases that focus on science, psychology, education, law, philosophy; I could go on but basically there is a database for every single subject. Trust me, you won’t have a hard time finding a database that fits your research.

Source: quickmeme.com

After learning all the techniques for the best way to search a specific topic in a database, I decided to try it out for my own research.

I chose to use the database OmniFile because it specializes in topics like education and social science which is exactly what I need for researching about mental health in college students. I began my research by searching the phrase ” depression* AND college* AND student* ” and to my surprise there were 1,631 results! The first source that came up was a scholarly journal titled “Correlates of Depression in First-Year College Students”. This was exactly what I was looking to find.

My goal when I started the process of locating an article was to find something that discussed what could possibly be causing depression and mental health issues in college students. The article I found was a study that identified and ranked the personal, academic, and social correlates of depression in first-year college students. Before I even started researching, I was really interested in what factors could be putting college students at a higher risk for mental illness. This study answered that for me and I was so excited that I found exactly what I was looking for.

One stumbling block I faced though, was that I could not find any information on the authors. Because this was a Canadian article I could not find any information on google. Luckily, I remembered what the tutorial taught me. Because this is a scholarly journal, it means that the authors are all usually professors who conducted a study and are sharing the results. After remembering this, I was able to find out that the authors were all professors at different universities in Québec.

Locating articles is not the easiest thing in the world, but it is very rewarding when you locate exactly what you were looking for. But one tip, have an open mind when looking for sources! You might be surprised at what you find when you are open to sources that weren’t exactly what you were looking for. Good luck!

Social media is the staple of the millennial generation. Just about every millennial has some type of social media account and it would almost be an understatement to say we are addicted to them.

source: memegenerator.net

We constantly know what everyone is doing and who they are hanging out with at the exact moment they are doing it. There is no sense of privacy anymore because we feel the need to share every single part of our life with the world. Whether it is tweeting about our day, sharing our pictures from the weekend on Facebook, or posting an aesthetically pleasing photo of that avocado toast we ate for breakfast on Instagram, we feel the need to post every piece of our life on social media.

Source:weknowmemes

This is becoming an unhealthy obsession and I think it might be ruining our generation. Because we constantly share our lives with the world, it creates the pressure to be perfect. Social media is a mask that people use to control how people see them. Someone may see their account on Instagram and think that they are perfect, but in reality they are only showing you what they want you to see. Social media is all just an illusion and we are all being manipulated by it.

While social media can be used as a very useful tool for communication, it is not good when someone is using it 24/7. It is unhealthy, especially for teenagers who are young and impressionable. I really think that the one of the reasons so many high school and college students are depressed and have anxiety is because of social media. We should not have to feel the pressure to look perfect all the time and try and prove to the world that we are having fun. Sometimes I just think life would be so much easier if social media did not exist.

I am a hypocrite though because I participate in social media just as much as everyone else does. But, as I realize more and more how much it is negatively effecting my life, I am trying to stay off of it. I know it is hard not to participate and want to share part of your life with your friends, but try to maybe do a little less of it. I was surprised at how freeing it feels to get away from it all for a little bit. Try it!

I am officially halfway done with the quarter and with all the midterms I have coming up, my stress levels are through the roof. I need to destress ASAP so that I can push through the rest of this quarter. If you also find yourself needing some tips on how to relieve your stress here are a few tips:

1. Go outside. 
   

   Source: memecrunch.com

   Getting some fresh air can really help you clear your head. Go for a walk, nature is one of the best stress relievers!

2. Take a nap
   

   Source: campusriot

   Sometimes you just need to sleep it off. Sleep is essential and if you haven’t had enough of, then you are not going to be able to focus and your stress will just get worse. Take a power nap and then get some homework done when you wake up.

3. Exercise
   

   Source: giphy

   Exercising helps your body produce endorphins that can make you feel more energized and healthy. Getting a little exercise is one of the best natural stress relievers you can find. Go to the gym or go on a short run around campus if you are feeling overwhelmed.

4. Meditate 
   

   Source: Spongebob

   Mediation can really help take your mind off all the stress. Take a few minutes out of each day to get rid of all the distractions and focus on yourself and your mind. Be alone with your thoughts and use this time to relax.

5. Make a list of what you need to accomplish for the week
   

   Source: memegenerator.net

   Making a list for the week or even for the day is really helpful to get organized and take some stress off. Plan your week out so that you can be prepared for what is to come and you can schedule in some time to de-stress.

I know stressing out is not fun but these tips actually help! Whenever I am feeling overwhelmed, I try to follow these tips and I always feel so much less stressed afterwards. Stress is only temporary, you can do it!