Dr. Elizabeth Bracher, Part 3

John: Hi this is Doctor John Dacey with my weekly podcast New Solutions to the Anxiety Epidemic. Last time, we were talking with Doctor Biz Bracher about college students and social anxieties. Today I’d like to ask her to continue this, and talk about the difference between seniors and freshmen. She teaches both groups and I think it’s going to be interesting to hear what she has to say about that. Good morning Biz.

Biz: Hi. So the first-year students seemed to settle into distance learning and their new home situation over time. It certainly hasn’t been ideal. Any of us who have spent hours on Zoom and trying to teach a seminar on Zoom and have the same sort of energy and rapport in the classroom will know that this distance learning isn’t as easy as it might appear. But the first-year students have settled into it.

John: By the way, how about for the teacher? Is there anxiety for the teacher also?

Biz: Most absolutely. I think that for teaching a seminar course of 20 students when you’re looking at sort of what I call “the Brady Bunch” of squares across. I pride myself on my ability to draw students into the conversation. I notice their physical response to conversations and I can draw them in saying, “Suzzie, you look like you have something to say on this topic” or “John, what do you want to add to this conversation?” and it draws them in in a very comfortable way. It’s really hard to monitor that online.

John: But you don’t do that at random? You’re saying you pick students on the basis of what they’re presenting as to whether or not they want to say something, right?

Biz: Yeah absolutely.

John: And that’s harder to do with the Zoom?

Biz: It’s so much harder because first of all, my 50-year-old eyes can’t also see the detail on someone’s face but how do I know that their facial expressions are reacting to what I’m saying or are they watching something else online? Are they doing email? Are they really checked in or checked out of the conversation? There certainly have been many students who I don’t think were really giving me their full attention. And who can blame them? There are so many things happening around us that you don’t have them in a classroom so their attention is pulled away. Ultimately, I think the first-year students transitioned and the light at the end of the tunnel for this semester and going through exams and such, they still have three years of college left. While they’re sad about this semester ending, they’re hopeful that this is not the college of the future. Our seniors, they’re still not settled with it because — and this is my hypothesis of it — I often refer to our students or, as a parent, our children as the baby on board generation. They’re the playdate generation. College students these days and millennials, they were raised to have their days scheduled first by their parents. They came home from the hospital in cars that had a placard that said “baby on board” as if everyone else was going to drive around that car differently because there was a new life in that car, as if the other people driving around them didn’t matter. Why isn’t there a “70-year-old on board”?

John: I never thought about that before but that’s a terrific insight. I like it very much.

Biz: But why is there any more value? So there’s this idea of protecting them, right? And then push that out as they get older, having playdates. There’s lots of research and conversation about “free-range kids” and kids that are let out to go play and maneuver the streets of the suburbs by themselves. More than not, parents mitigate those situations so rather than just telling your kids to go outside and play and come back when the streetlights turn on, as you and I were told to do as kids, our kids are being scheduled. I was caught off guard when my oldest child turned to me once, he was three or four years old and he said, “Do you think Ben is available today?” as if Ben had a schedule and somebody organizing his time.

John: Which was true, right?

Biz: Absolutely. Which was true was that I had to call his mother and find some time and we arranged for a drop-off and then we played games with the kids. We didn’t just send them out into the yard, that was scary. Then they got into school age and in schools, everything is organized for them and they’re being taught to the test, very few schools allow for an open curriculum of bringing in new ideas and such.

John: Excuse me for one second but what does “taught to the test” mean?

Biz: To teach to the test meaning whether it’s the state regulations of exams to benchmark our students or if it’s in the high school AP exams or final exams, what students are going to be tested on in the end to show proficiency. Teachers are spending their time teaching to the test as opposed to just general learning and curiosity. Naturally, college graduates get out, and then, I’ve always noticed that while commencement day can be as much of a celebration, it’s sad for the student. My students start anticipating it months before saying, “don’t talk about commencement day. That’s going to be so sad.” I pushed them on that to think about the fact that by the time they graduate from college, sometime in May, they’ll be ready to leave. In most cases, they will feel like they did all they needed, all they wanted, and granted they will miss the proximity of their friends, but they don’t feel unprepared to go out into the world. They don’t need to take one more semester of classes or sit through one more set of exams they’re ready to move on. It’s not until September the next fall that their sadness really sets it because it will be the first time in their memory that they won’t be going back to school. For most people, some of them will be going to grad school but the vast majority of college students are going into jobs or volunteering situations and also in that, this will be the first time not all of their peers will be doing the same thing. Some will be going to grad school, but some will be in the world of work and some will be volunteering and some will be taking a year before they start grad school, and so there is no grand normal anymore. Everybody in their grade isn’t doing the same thing. And that to them is anxiety-provoking. There’s no clear road map. But what I noticed this year is that that process of not having a road map and not being together as a class happened, not only earlier but not on their own schedule, not in a predictable manner so this transition that was going to happen anyway in May has happened much earlier, almost like pulling the rug out from them.

John: It was so abrupt, is that what you’re saying?

Biz: It was so abrupt, unexpected, and uncontrolled. We were at a school where we just had spring break and so students left campus with all of their stuff. Many universities and colleges across the country told their students, go on spring break, take an extra week, and then come back and this will all be resolved. We know that that didn’t happen. Those students went on spring break, they then went home, their stuff was on campus. I know students who had to fly across the country to go get their stuff and come home or had to pay services to pack their dorm rooms up and send their stuff home. There was just this crazy amount of detail and orchestration and not knowing what it all meant. And then in the midst of it, the economy is bottoming out. Many students who have been promised jobs were told in the worst-case scenario the job no longer exists or in the best-case scenario we were gonna have you start in June but now you’re not gonna start until July or October which put a little more anxiety on students. And on top of it, many of them were going to urban or metropolitan areas they aren’t necessarily from so they’re supposed to be starting a job in July in New York City but they don’t have anywhere to live because they didn’t have time to get roommates and go to see apartments and find someplace to live so there’s still a lot hanging out there in the balance for the seniors. Whereas the freshmen, god willing and knock on wood, are going to be back on a campus next fall. And if they’re not on a campus, at least they’ll know that they’re going to be in online classes. Now I’m not saying there’s still not a lot of anxiety because parents have lost jobs and financial packages have changed and they need to decide whether or not they want to be in distance learning. Is that the kind of educational experience they want - no one wants it but are they willing to endure it and pay for it. So I’m not saying the freshmen are totally out of the woods but the stakes are a lot less extreme because seniors are now moving into the world of work and into the world of grad school. We have students who are applying to medical school who haven’t even sat for the MCAT yet, they have no idea what their scores are for their standardized testing. That’s provoking a lot of anxiety among premed students. There’s just a lot of unknown and this is a generation that has never had to deal with an incredible amount of unknown. Even within their unknowns, they had a cadence and a road map of sorts.

John: By the way, it occurs to me that a lot of people who are premed students are beginning to think, “Boy if I become a doctor then I’m going to be really risking my life.” Do you find decrease in the number of people who want to be premed students?

Biz: Well I don’t know nationally those numbers and I am a premed advisor at our university and in these last 8 weeks I’ve been meeting regularly online with seven med school candidates and actually I have found every single one of them have been more committed to their vocation of medicine and that has been really inspiring. Some of them were working in labs, they were already out of their undergrad studies and taking a year to work in labs and gain some experience and I have a couple students who have been redeployed to the front lines, two students who are working nights with COVID patients as nurses, aids and watching people die and they’re in the worst situation because there’s not much that medical doctors can do, it appears that there would be even less for a nurse’s assistant, someone who has no formal medical training yet and is just waiting to get into medical school but quite honestly in the midst of COVID and people dying without their families, they found that they have been incredibly important to their patients and their patients’ families as they assure and comfort families that they’re carrying for their loved ones as they’re dying. It’s been an incredible amount of anxiety on those students but I would say that every single last one of them whether they’ve been redeployed and working with COVID patients or they’re in labs or they’re still in undergrad waiting to finish undergraduate studies in order to apply to med school, every single one of them has been more committed than ever to be a part of the medical community.

John: Biz, unfortunately, our time has run out again and I have to say I really would love to have you come back. I think a lot of my listeners, even if they don’t have college students right now, they can understand a lot more about anxiety by listening to what you have said so thank you very much and I will be inviting you back if you’re willing to do it.

Biz: It’s always my pleasure to talk to you and your listeners.

John: Thank you so much.