Mental Health and Graduate School

lowendtheory nails it:

… a lot of the mental health problems that i see graduate students struggling with have as much to do with the forms of micro- and macro-hierarchy through which the academic profession is structured, as well as the attitudes toward graduate students through which it becomes naturalized.  there is so much that graduate school leaves you completely alone to figure out, then punishes you for not having figured out already.  you’re supposed to know how to negotiate a set of relations with professors who have considerably more institutional power and clout than you but who probably experience themselves as having very little institutional power and clout, and who are probably not as receptive as they might be to the impact that their actions have on your life, your material livelihood, and your sense of wellbeing.

(Source: lowendtheory)