Research Gone Mental
“Everything was okay until now.” At least that’s what I believed at 1:19 AM on a random weekday night as I sat on the floor of my room with a giant blue binder and colored highlighters. This was the third time I was reading through the data, and I was beginning the coding process, yet this time was entirely different. I read the same response I had read twice before, and my mind did not seem to understand the interview this time. Maybe this inability to understand the data triggered a whole bunch of other feelings because all the sudden I felt my heart race, a frog in my throat and this impending feeling of doom. At this time, I knew this was only a feeling I got before I had a panic attack. It was a vortex of emotions, a tidal wave coming at me. My mind started to question everything: You got this before, why not now? You are a senior at a prestigious institution, shouldn’t this task be simple enough? Am I not smart enough? What if I am not spending enough time on this? Will I finish on time? Will my group finish it on time? Will it ever end? Am I not doing enough for the group? What if my group thinks I’m dumb? Will my group leave me behind if I’m not at the same page as them? What if after everything I’m just not enough? All these questions and more were further engulfing me into this enormous tidal wave.
As a person with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder, anxiety is something I don’t enjoy talking about. I’m a naturally extroverted, stable and bubbly personality and sometimes it feels wrong to have a mental health issue. I think some of it may be that sometimes I believe emotions make you feel weak and are just an excuse when you lack an explanation. I also believe anxiety has negative connotations and this stigma, which is why I still refuse to put a label on it. There is also this innate pressure at Colby to be okay, and to somehow manage everything with a level head. Because of that pressure, I feel like if I can’t do just that, then maybe I am not good enough to be at such a prestigious institution such as Colby.
Surprisingly, academics has never been a trigger for my anxiety, if anything academics has always been something quite stable. Academics has definitely caused me stress, but up until this moment, my studies had not gotten to a level so stressful enough that it would trigger my anxiety. Among the commotion of my mental spiral, I managed to close the binder and braced myself for my impending attack, yet it never came. Maybe cause I started to think of how I got here to this moment.
I realized first that research is hard. Not only that,but also this is also all new to me. Truth is, I have not spent enough time on research. Many people spend day in, day out, for months doing just research, yet as a college student in four classes, a practicum, working two jobs, with multiple extracurriculars there is just not enough time to process the research. I realized that all this time I had been so “go go go” that I had not taken the time to digest and reflect on how this research was affecting me. I also recognized that this was an imperfectly perfect learning moment that could relate to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Habitus is a hard concept to really explain and even understand because of its ambiguities. From what I understand, habitus is the physical embodiment of cultural capital specifically regarding the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences. Therefore habitus is not something innate, but learned. The learned habitus; however, can become so natural it almost feels as if it is something acquired through birth. For veteran professors and people who have done research for 20 years and written countless papers, research and coding can be similar to second nature for them. Research in this case is their habitus. They have possessed the skills and formed the habits to successfully doing this in depth research and are able to put their findings into a well analyzed research paper. Research is brand new to me, I have not yet adapted to coding and analyzing data.
I finally understood that it was not expected of me to be able to understand everything at once. One simple google search can show you how graduate students who do research go through similar mental health situations as I did. Since that night, the binder has sat on my desk untouched for a couple of days, because truthfully, I was afraid. I was afraid of the mental spiral the binder left me.
I was afraid of not being good enough and that I would pale in comparison to the rest of my classmates. Perhaps, I was scared because this was the first time I felt defeated by the research. Yet now, I am aware that most of us are all on the same ship. The unknown can be scary, but the unknown pushes you to a new horizons. I learned there was nothing to panic about. I learned that it is okay to take a break if you are not okay and that it is also okay to be afraid. Research will get overwhelming sometimes, but everything does not need to be rushed or done all at once. At the end of the day, Everdeen can wait; Violet, Jake, Harrison, and Ruby will still be there in that binder no matter when I open it. So remember when research engulfs you, take a deep breath and believe that all will be okay.
the interviews from Everdeen. Amidst the confusion, the next thing to hit me after these four words was emotions —- a mix of excitement and jealousy. Maybe it was because of the realization that, amidst my confusion a high schooler on the other side of the globe could not only define it, but also apply it. Maybe it was because I could not understand why there was such an emphasis on global citizenship within the research. Maybe I was just impressed that a high schooler named Jake went all 
way to Papua New Guinea to contribute as a global citizen (which I have never done or even thought of). Or maybe this entire research project has pushed me to confront whether or not I am an active global citizen.
curriculum intertwines with experiences of other countries. A student, through Rizvi’s described, would not only gain insight of what is occurring within their own nation, but also gain this notion of their identity as a global citizen.
world. It has also made me aware of this “superiority” complex where we use globalization as a means to go to an impoverished country to 
“help” but really make no lasting impact or consider more permanent options. I also have realized the privilege that I hold going to a world-class private elite university that provide the opportunities and resources that allow me to go to all corners of the Earth are just next door. So after all this time, I learned that analyzing this research was not to make me feel like my education was lackluster, instead it pushed me to discover the global citizen within me.