The Unwritten Curriculum of Keeping Good Mental Health: Some Insider Tips
Accept your existence like you accept the Caltech squirrels. (Credit: Jieyu Zheng)
Last month the Caltech community suffered the tragic loss of Parker Thompson. I did not personally know Thompson, but it warms my heart to see the many articles and photos on The California Tech dedicated to his memory. Mental health is a tremendous challenge in intense academic environments like Caltech, and during my five years here I have witnessed much hardship and have had to part with friends who were set back by these struggles. As a member of the community, I feel obliged to share some of the lessons I have learned. Beyond the official resources listed on the Caltech website and in course syllabi, I have benefited from the following unofficial resources and mindsets.
Actively maintain your mental health, just like going to the gym.
We are all educated about how to maintain good physical health. While routines can become as complex as one’s obsession allows, you don’t need to be Bryan Johnson to stay healthy. There are two basic principles:
- Regular intervals of good things (steady sleep schedules, exercise, routine physical exams)
- Limited access to bad things (overprocessed food or occasional all-nighters)
The same principles apply to mental health. We all know that annual physical exams are important: you shouldn’t see a doctor only when problems become unbearable. Yet many people do not take the same approach to mental health. Caltech’s student health insurance includes 25 free psychotherapy sessions each year. You can treat this like a gym membership: speak to someone about your mental health with intervals. At the end of each session, schedule the next one so you don’t lose the streak. Just as you rely on professionals for your physical health, professional therapists help regulate your mental health.
Another resource is occupational therapy (OT) at Caltech – it is free and even unlimited. OT provides a place to talk about work-related stress and develop healthier work habits. I worked with Dr. Grace Wong for years and cannot speak highly enough of her sessions. Before OT, I could complete my work but always suffered intense worry before deadlines and dissatisfaction with my work. One metaphor she shared stayed with me: work is like crossing a log bridge, and excessive anxiety places that bridge between two skyscrapers. Therapy helps reshape your mindset so the same work can happen with the bridge safely on the ground.
You should also schedule breaks regularly. When was the last time you spent a day without thinking about coursework or labwork? Try to build breaks in – even if it’s just an hour, even when you feel too busy to stop. Working nonstop rarely means getting more done, but rest can reboot your mind and improve efficiency.
The second principle is limiting exposure to triggers of worry and anxiety. We all know the effects of social media, yet we rarely limit it the way we limit french fries. Our bodies regulate appetite, but our appetite for information has no ceiling, so try to create a bound for your mental processed food. Free apps like ScreenZen can lock up your Instagram and help build healthier habits.
The biggest takeaway is to actively build a fortress around your mental health. A good structure requires maintenance – and so does your mind.
Be fond of your own existence, not just your doing
I often find that the biggest challenge for many people at Caltech is not academic but learning to like themselves. Many of us live under the spell of imposter syndrome and perfectionism. Ask someone about their work and the first reply is often “I’m busy,” followed by “I didn’t make any progress” or even “everything I do feels useless.” These statements may sound extreme on paper, but almost everyone here, from students to faculty, feels this way from time to time.
In letters commemorating someone’s passing, we often reminisce about their achievements. Research shows that these matter-of-fact records can sometimes be triggering to those suffering from depression and may even lead to increased suicides (known as the Werther effect). The thought might be: “That person was already so wonderful for what they did, and yet they still sought death. What is the point of me, so unimportant with far fewer achievements, living in this world?”
The truth is that there will always be someone more accomplished than us on this planet. It can feel especially painful when that person happens to sit next to you at the dining table. On the other hand, nobody is on top of every possible metric. Even the person you wish you could be is less accomplished in some other dimension of life.
At this point, the wise voices in TED talks will advise you not to compare yourself with others, but with your past self. You should feel satisfied as long as you are improving compared to yesterday, they say. But even this comparison is metric-dependent. You might have completed more problem sets than yesterday, but you are also guaranteed to get older every second. In the metric of time, you are always less young than you were a moment ago. There is no rebuttal to that.
The narrative of always being better than your past self can also lead to a problematic mindset: building your happiness entirely on what you do. I personally had an image of a “perfect graduate student” – someone who works long hours every day, plays hard, maintains an active social life, and keeps their acute load in the optimal range on their Garmin watch. I made to-do lists for each of these aspects, to the point that if I didn’t spend enough hours in the office, I would feel that the day was a failure. This often happens to people who maintain strict routines or streaks. Sometimes that feeling of 1% incompleteness can become so overwhelming that it erases the remaining 99% that you completed with real effort.
The hardest lesson for me has been learning to be content with my existence, instead of what I did or what I am doing. There will always be creatures whose single actions have far more influence than anything you or I might do. Their existence matters a lot. But the absence of such influence does not mean that your existence does not matter.
Here is where the wildlife columnist in me speaks. Look at the fox squirrels on campus: In some sense they are not even supposed to be here – they are an introduced species. They spend their days eating and wandering around and are certainly not working on any scientific projects. Yet when we see them (or at least when I see them), we don’t glare and yell, “You shouldn’t be here.” Their ancestors were brought here by humans – not their choice at all. In the same way, none of us chose to be born into this world. So accept your existence the way you accept the Caltech squirrels.
When in doubt, help others
The section above may sound unsolicitedly philosophical, opinionated, or even cliché. You might be asking: “None of what you said is helpful. What if I simply can’t shake off the feeling of inferiority and worthlessness?” But bear with me for one more moment. Here is a cure-all antidote that I learned from former members of this community and that I have found the most useful of all: situate yourself in relation to others in the world.
There are many places where our help is needed. On campus, student clubs would not exist without people running them. Events do not organize themselves—even if you are not the one spearheading them, helping to set up chairs and tables is already valuable. Organizations such as Center for Teaching, Learning and Outreach (CTLO) and Caltech Y always need tutors, booth hosts, and volunteers. The California Tech needs people to deliver issues across campus. You might even get paid for your help.
But helping is not only volunteering; it is also about showing care for others. Check in with your friends and ask about their feelings, just as you would like someone to check in with you. If you are a senior student, talk with the junior students you know and see if they need advice. Sometimes even a small tip about which classes to choose can help reduce the stress they face next term. And even if you are a G1, the most junior of all graduate students, you are still seen as a successful figure by many people who hope to apply to graduate school one day. Your mentorship can be meaningful to them. I personally received so much help in this way from my senior colleagues.
This becomes especially important during moments of doubt. Sometimes loneliness feels so heavy that caring for yourself already feels difficult. You might then ask: “How do I even care for others if I can’t take care of myself? What if I receive nothing in return?” But care is not conserved like energy in the first law of thermodynamics. Here, the important step is simply to do something for someone else, to spend a moment not entirely absorbed in your own suffering. The feedback may come to you unexpectedly. Even when it doesn’t, the act itself matters because it shifts your attention away from nihilistic questioning about meaning.
While writing this piece, doubts crossed my mind that nobody might read it or find it useful. Yet putting into words the helpful things to me already made me feel a little more powerful. I hope you will simply start acting and discover that feeling of power somewhere.