Campus Calm Community
Where students speak out about grades, stress and personal well-being

Several years ago, I sat on the sidelines and watched other women light up rooms. They weren't stunning in the way that women are supposed to be, but they had this beauty about them that I just couldn't pinpoint. All I knew was that I was lacking in it. It was body confidence, I later found out -- a confidence I embrace today, knowing full well how long it took me to find.

When I was 13 years old, something as minor as a pimple could leave me moping for hours. I wore heavy makeup to conceal my acne -- so much so that I could spend an hour in the bathroom before school to make sure every blotch on my face was hidden. 'Friends' at school called me "zit face" to be cruel; I tried to ignore them, but I knew it was true. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a pale comparison of the girl I used to be.

That year, our school took a three-day field trip to Washington D.C., where we stayed at a hotel with a swimming pool. I wasn't embarrassed to be seen in a swimsuit, but I always wore a t-shirt to hide the acne that scattered my arms and back. As my right foot skimmed the cool water, the lifeguard yelled, "Sorry, it's against hotel policy to wear t-shirts in the pool." I watched my friends splash around, confident with their flawless skin and knew I could never expose myself. I faked a stomachache and bolted for the privacy of my hotel bathroom. Outraged, I peeled off my t-shirt to unmask scabbed, irritated skin. I cursed the imperfect reflection in the bathroom mirror. I screamed, "I HATE you! You're SO ugly!"

By the time I turned 15, the acne had vanished thanks to medication. Eventually, the scars faded to the background. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a face that was pretty again, but a body that was all wrong. I discovered in a dressing room that at 130 pounds, I was too fat for my 5'2'' body.

"I'm hideous!" I moaned to my mother, creaking the dressing room door open so she could see my fat thighs in the sparkly black mini. Sigh.

"No you're not," she reassured, smiling sadly. She suggested that exercise might make me feel better.

I bought exercise videos and gave up ice cream and chocolate, those sinful foods women aren't supposed to eat. In the high school cafeteria, I ate dry turkey subs (the cafeteria didn't offer low-fat mayo packets), skim milk, and cups of pineapples. My taller and thinner girlfriend enjoyed chocolate milk, fries, and Doritos. She also went to bed at night with her makeup on and never saw a pimple in her life. Talk about fairness.

By age 20, I maintained a stable weight of 120 pounds and accepted my short legs. I then obsessed about my too-small chest! At a small 34B, I felt my body would be better if only my breasts were larger like women on magazine covers and on television. I'd never been a sucker for gimmicks, never chanted, "I must, I must, I must increase my bust" while squeezing my pecks but an obsession had taken hold.

I bought padded bras, gel-filled inserts, and pills promising to increase bust-size (they didn't). I contemplated breast augmentation. Small breasts signified something was missing -- a scaled down version of femininity, I was sure.

Then in college, I devoured books about America's obsessive quest for physical beauty and how impossible standards hurt women and girls. Something as insignificant as a mirror holds the power to control our self-image. A piece of glass can determine how we feel about ourselves. I had enough. FINALLY.

I stood before my bedroom mirror, stripped of clothing, exposed to myself. I studied my body slowly, trying to see beyond the pain and insecurity to find what remained -- just me.

I saw my father's deep brown eyes, my mother's thick brown hair, and full lips that reveal a fantastic smile when I'm happy enough to show it off. I saw thin, shapely arms sprinkled with nineteen beauty marks, a flat stomach, and small breasts proportional to my body. I turned around. Sure, my behind was a teensy bit bigger than I would have liked, but it certainly wasn't anything to be ashamed of. My legs were short, but I liked how toned they looked. They were petite and curvy. At that moment, I finally just saw me. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I accepted myself as a beautifully flawed woman.

When I was a teenager, one of my best friends had a beautiful dancer's body. She flaunted long graceful legs, small hips, and a flat bottom -- everything I had always wanted. Imagine my surprise when she confided that she was jealous of me!

"Are you SERIOUS?" I gasped, inspecting myself in her dresser mirror. "You're tall and can eat anything you want and never gain a pound. Your legs are so thin."

"But you're curvy," she responded. "Guys look at you." A single tear glided down her left cheek as she pulled her long legs close to her chest. She grabbed her favorite teddy bear from her bed and ran her fingers through its soft white fur, careful to avert my gaze. I didn't have the courage to tell her the truth, so I let the silence hang between us until she changed the subject. We eventually drifted apart.

I should have told her, "Imagine how amazing we both could feel if we saw in ourselves what others have seen all along." My younger self never did, and my older self wishes I would have.

At age 27, I find loving my body means accepting that it will NEVER be perfect. No matter how much I work out, I accept that my behind will never look flawless, like bronzed goddesses on television. I'll never look like a supermodel, but I don't care. I'm real and when I brush past a mirror, I'm finally comfortable with everything I see. Thankfully, my surrendered battle with the mirror empowers me to focus on more important aspects of my life ...

Like realizing my dreams.

"I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself."
Oprah Winfrey

Let's discuss:

• How important do you think a positive body image is to your success?
• Do you have a positive body image? Why or why not?
• Have you ever let your body insecurities stop you from realizing a dream?
• Can you name a few role models who maintain a positive body image? What can you take from them to implement in your own life?
• What do you think makes a person beautiful?

Leave me feedback at the end of this entry. I'd love to hear from you!

Henry David Thoreau once said, "Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails." Well, school's in session, you've got two papers due next week, three quizzes to study for and a part-time job to help you pay the bills. Sorry Henry, who's got time to live deliberately? Well, you do if you want to excel in school and in life.

Studies show that if you simply learn continuously your retention of the information you are trying to learn drops steadily. If you're cramming all the information you can into your head before a test, you're not really going to retain anything. However, just before and just after you take a short break your memory for an item is much better. Therefore, if you take short breaks, at something like 30 to 60 minute intervals, you will find you will remember more.

Advice? Load your books into your backpack and bike to a nearby park. Study for 30 minutes, then take fifteen minutes to soak up your surroundings. Better yet, study for an hour, then take an hour off and walk the park. Breathe autumn's crisp fresh air. If you're lucky enough to live in an area that boasts fall foliage, study the colors of the leaves on the trees. Those leaves will be gone for another season before you know it, and you will have missed a magic moment to see. Red. Yellow. Orange. Let the fallen leaves crackle under your feet as you swoosh ahead. Simplify. If you've got more than two extracurricular activities in addition to your regular school load, consider gracefully bowing out of one of them to free up a little "me" time. No one's going to fault you for taking a break. Go back to your homework after your walk and discover how much you retained. Who knew that Henry David Thoreau guy could help to make you so smart?

Let's discuss:

• Anyone have any creative ideas for combining school work and play?
• Does experiencing nature help you when you're stressed out about school?
• How important do you think "me" time is?

Leave me feedback at the end of this entry. I'd love to hear from you!

Use these resources to learn more about high school & college life and what it means to be successful (ie. student health and happiness should factor in!)

College initiative - Campaign for America's mental health
A cubicle is not a home
Power Lunching 101, a high-stakes test of humanity
Overachievers find success comes with a psychological price
Students with anxiety disorders a growing demographic
None of the Above. None.
High school students and pressure - The State Of Our Nation's Youth
High Achievers: What Price Are They Paying? A Harvard Interviewer's Honest Assessment
Appreciate That Less Than Perfect Is More Than Acceptable
Is my teen too ambitious?
Parents get too aggressive on admissions
Overachievers miss out on college experience
New Lesson for College Students: Lighten Up
Campus Blues
The National Center for Fair and Open Testing
SOS—Stressed-Out Students: Helping to Improve Health, School Engagement, and Academic Integrity
Managing Stress in College, Part 1
Managing Stress in College, Part 2
Not Missing the SAT
How to gently help package your senior for college admission
Dealing With Depression In Schools
The JED Foundation - Strengthening the Mental Health Safety Net for College Students
Colleges Struggle, Innovate to Meet Mental Health Needs of Students
NAMI - National Alliance on Mental Illness - Campus Affiliates

Body Love:

Student Nutrition & Body Image Action Committee
I Am Beautiful Body Project
Never Compare Yourself to Models on Magazine Covers Again
Love Your Body Day
BodyImageHealth.org

Ready or not, October marks that time of year when college-bound high school juniors prepare to take the PSAT, which serves as practice for that dreaded and sometimes feared SAT I. Before you work yourself up into a full-fledged anxiety attack at the mere mention of the word “SAT”, consider this:

The National Center for Fair and Open Testing lists over 730 four-year colleges in the United States that no longer require the SAT I or ACT for admission. That’s right – over 730 colleges! Moreover, a rising number of colleges are beginning to place a bigger emphasis on grades and personal accomplishments over scores.

The belief that you’ll never get into a good college and you’ll never be successful in life if you don’t master the SAT is a total myth. I’ll give you a personal example: Both in our twenties, my husband and I are not SAT success stories. I scored a mere 1070 on the SAT in 1996 and never bothered to retake the test. I hate standardized tests and never do well on them. Yet I still went to an excellent college in Western New York on an academic scholarship and graduated at the top of my class. Today, I’m an accomplished writer with national and regional credits. My 27-year-old husband never even took the SAT! He went to a two-year college for graphic design that didn’t require the SATs. After he received his Associates degree, he transferred to a four-year college and earned his Bachelors degree with honors. Today, he’s a successful print/web designer. We are not the exceptions to the rule.

I’m certainly not telling you to waltz into the SAT exam room with an “I-don’t-give-a-s#@$” attitude, but keep things in perspective. Whether you ace the SATs, fail them big-time, retake them three times, or decide never to take them at all, you can be successful in life. I will repeat that: You CAN be successful in life with or without the SAT, or the ACT for that matter.

Questions:

• What SAT score or ACT score do you consider “good enough?”
• Do you plan to retake the SAT or ACT if you don’t get the score you hoped for?
• Do you believe you can be successful in life without the SAT?
• Any stories on this subject that you’d like to share?

Feel free to leave me feedback at the end of this entry with your thoughts. I always value students’ opinions!

Further reading:
The National Center for Fair and Open Testing
Taking aim at admissions anxiety

OK, confession time: I quit my first full-time writing job out of college after putting in a mere two days at the office with no second job lined up. This probably could be perceived as a mistake or a failure by many.

The reason I quit? It was a grant-writing job and I discovered pretty quickly that grant writing is boring (you try writing dense 30-plus page proposals all day and see how much you'd like it). Well, actually there was more to the story than that. My fifty-something-year-old female boss was a chain-smoker (guess what, chain smoking does cause premature wrinkles) who liked to smoke in the office and my desk was right next to her door. After eight hours in her proximity I felt like I had inhaled a pack of my own. After one day of putting up with her indoor puffing and wondering if it was even legal, I marched into her office and told her that the secondhand smoke was bothering me and asked if she could either smoke outside or move my desk to a different room. The next day I walked in and an air purifier rested on my desk. My boss greeted me with a cigarette hanging from her mouth.

I graciously quit my job on the spot and took an unpaid internship with an online teen magazine instead. No paycheck. No benefits. I also re-entered the world of retail for extra cash. But I gained more relevant writing & editing experience at that unpaid internship than I ever would have grant writing. That experience led me to the paying writing jobs I enjoy today. Some experiences are actually priceless. Just ask my lungs!

Question:

• When have you ever quit or failed at something that actually led you to success? Or just plain old felt good?

Leave me feedback at the end of this entry. I'd love to hear from you!