Students suffer from grind culture which is the idea that status is achieved by always being “on and available.” This culture encourages students to finish school as quickly as possible without gaining the necessary skills needed.
Grind culture applies mostly to both college students and people in the workforce. It is all about making every second count and working hard all day, every day. If you see someone working long, hard hours you automatically assume they are successful in life.
Grind culture is everywhere, as you see it in Nike’s 2018 ad campaign “Rise and Grind.” The phrase is consistently used to explain the “no days off” mentality that is usually attached to grind culture. The business world has started to emphasis the love of the grind by producing articles such as “6 ways to take care of your mental health while on the grind.”
I have also succumbed to grind culture, as I am a junior at Dixie State University and I only graduated high school in 2020. While taking 18 plus credits each semester, all I had in mind was graduating early. This is what would make me successful after college right? Wrong.
It took me until now to decide graduating early is not worth the toll my mental health was taking from never getting a break from school. If I still wanted to graduate early I would have to take 20 plus credits each semester and summer classes. This would cause me to be doing homework during any free time I had and school would be consuming my life. While still having to do things like find an internship that would look good on my resume.
With a long weekly to-do list I would have no time to meet new people or attend campus events. Students are pressured into grind culture because it makes them look successful, but it takes a toll on students’ mental health and social life. Social life is one of the most important things to have in college because this is where you meet new people and make connections.
College students are more likely to feel guilty for relaxing and not working because they desire to work hard, play hard. We feel the need for everything we do to have purpose for our future. For most, the future life they strive for is one of materialistic value. We have a created a toxic lifestyle where materialistic items are more important than our mental health.
Why should students continue on this toxic path they have created when it doesn’t make any sense? For example, why do people think if you take a ton of credits and graduate early you will automatically be more successful in life? This is so backwards to me. If students were to stay in college longer, they would be able to take more classes toward their major, meet more people and make new connections. They could graduate with a higher degree than what they may have initially decided on.
Students and people in the workplace need to eliminate this toxic culture before it turns us all into robots who want to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
