R ecruiting season for Ross undergrads is essentially over. Winter break offered much- needed room to breathe for the many upperclassmen who have secured an internship or full-time job offer for the upcoming year. While students in general are at significant risk for developing mental health issues throughout college, each fall at Ross poses a unique kind of stress for upperclassmen as their recruiting schedules and academic lives strain against one another. On paper, employment outcomes for Business students look incredible. Ninety-eight percent of undergraduates receive a job offer within three months of graduation, their starting salaries average at $72,500 and they secure internships and full-time positions all over the United States and abroad. The program clearly provides students ample resources to excel in their early careers. The journey from arriving on campus as relatively inexperienced freshmen to achieving those impressive numbers as upperclassmen, however, can be a rollercoaster. This is especially true during the notorious junior fall semester in which students compete with each other and aim to land coveted internship positions. These positions ideally translate into full-time return offers, and while most students do end up re-recruiting as seniors, the pressure to perform specifically for junior year internships is immense. Mind Matters is a student organization within the Business School that raises awareness about mental health and wellness and works to decrease stigma against seeking help in the community. At junior convocation this year, members of the group showed the results of a survey administered to business undergraduates — they reported a significant spike in anxiety and depression during the junior fall semester. Forrest Cao, founder and president of Mind Matters, explained in an interview that these experiences are common during recruiting. “For students in this situation, the worst thing is for them to think they’re the only ones,” Cao said. “We’re trying to get people thinking about how this is something most people deal with. There is a community that understands and is going through what they feel.” I believe some of the stress that induces or exacerbates mental health problems in students is unavoidable due to the generally difficult nature of any job search, regardless of the program they’re enrolled in. But recruiting at a business school is uniquely systematic, extremely competitive and placed at a crucial academic moment in the college careers of students. Of the factors that contribute to mental health problems, “issues of culture, classes and recruiting are interlinked,” Cao said. The Business School can do more to mitigate these negative outcomes by balancing its curriculum with its recruiting schedule and increasing mental health resources available to students. The most common process by which Business undergraduates find employment is the Business School’s on-campus recruiting system, which is highly regimented and combines an assortment of formal activities. Students are strongly encouraged to participate in activities the Business School coordinates such as individual company presentations and networking hours, career fairs for those applying for a position in a particular function or industry, resume drops on the school’s intranet and a bidding system for first-round interviews that take place in the Ross School of Business Building. These various events are condensed almost entirely into the months of September through November each year and consume a significant amount of students’ time. In addition, on-campus interviews routinely take place during the same hours as class sessions and companies also frequently fly out students for final round interviews during the school week. This process — combined with the inherently competitive nature of attending the same recruiting events and applying for the same positions as peers — is a huge undertaking to balance with existing academic and personal obligations. As someone who had not worked at a large corporation before or previously experienced such a stringent sequence of networking events, the months during my own recruiting process last year were difficult. I frankly had no idea whether I was asking the right questions to truly get the best feel for a company’s culture, attending the right presentations (since many occurred at the same time) or even wearing the right clothes to fit the mysterious and ill-defined expectation of “business casual” attire at my events. Week by week, I felt a whirlwind of anxieties over my qualifications, made tough calls between completing work shifts for my part-time job and attending endlessly available recruiting events and tackled the biggest career decisions of my life so far. It was a period of tremendous learning and self-growth, but it came with emotional and physical tolls I hadn’t anticipated in myself. I saw my own experiences reflected in my peers as they moved through many of the same decisions, obstacles, realizations and struggles throughout the semester. While I was exploring my career so intensely, I was upset to find that the Business School incorporates its most rigorous academic experience into this semester and strictly assigns the junior fall course schedules for students. It plugs an entrepreneurship challenge mid-semester on top of normal coursework and schedules it in the same week as a significant number of on-campus interviews. These frictions, among others, made me constantly choose between dedicating my efforts to courses and recruiting. The school itself doesn’t implement any systematic support channels or follow- ups about how students can best approach recruiting and prioritize their mental health. The Business School does provide psychological services from one of the University’s CAPS counselors and occasionally emails links to articles like tips for managing stress. Cao has also found that the Business School has been responsive to Mind Matters’ efforts — it provides space for the organization’s meditation sessions and is working with group members to establish an “Identity and Diversity in Organizations” session focusing on mental health. But I believe the lack of initiative from the administration itself demonstrates a passive position toward students’ well-being. I encourage the school to consider its students more in its program’s structure, reconcile its recruiting schedule with its curriculum as much as possible and continue to boost mental health resources. The Business School should recognize the unique position we are in as students, as job seekers and as people throughout these recruiting seasons and, more broadly, throughout our time in an undergraduate business program. It should build upon the work its students are already doing to promote mental health and well-being, and take direct action to alleviate some of the pressure on its community of students in such a critical moment. A s a high school student, when I began my college application process, I knew I was part of a larger group. So many people around me were first- generation college students, and we often struggled together. Upon my acceptance to the University of Michigan, that large group quickly evaporated. The people around me were suddenly from long lines of college graduates, and I began to feel out of place. My new found friends commented on what an oddity I was, braving the big scary school without a clue what I was getting into. According to the University’s own statistics, only 10.6 percent of the students in 2013 were first generation, of which nearly half reported their parents had actually still attended some college but received no degree. Other top universities also have first-generation student populations of less than 20 percent. In fact, according to The New York Times, “The proportion of freshmen at elite campuses who are first generation — 11 percent Dartmouth, 12 percent at Princeton, 14 percent at Yale, 15 percent at Amherst, 16 percent at Cornell, 17 percent at Brown — nearly matches that of their low-income Pell grant recipients.” The fact that these numbers have reached one-fifth of the national average might tell a tale of a deeper problem. These statistics show that there are clearly some more obstacles keeping the majority of these students out of universities. According to a 2010 study by the United States Department of Education, 50 percent of college students were first generation, defined as students whose parents had never attended a postsecondary school. That is, never pursued an education beyond high school. As a first-generation student, the challenges of pursuing a higher education are already difficult as it is. Now, throw in the most prestigious public institutions of learning in the country and make these students a minority group, and it is not doing anything to help the situation. The University of Michigan must take steps in the right direction and act as an example for other top colleges to follow. In recent years, the University has made such steps, especially with the introduction of both the HAIL Scholarship and the Go Blue Guarantee, which was introduced last year. These scholarships provide financial help to in-state students who come from diverse backgrounds and are not able to pay their own way without taking on massive student debt. As a first-generation student and someone who finished high school and applied to college as a homeless student, I can sympathize with the struggles involved. There are no parents to ask for college advice and often no older siblings to ask either. If you are lucky, you might have gone to a big school or had an amazing college counselor to work with. If you were like me, you were homeschooled until high school, where your graduating class was 26 students and neither your parents nor your school was much help. Some parents still think today’s world is the same one they grew up in half a century ago when you did not need a college education to be successful; you simply had to work hard. Nobody seems to understand the questions you might have or the anxiety one might feel. The people around you will often hold a higher expectation of you then you have been accustomed to. Thankfully, the University has recently done good work looking out for their extreme minority of such students. Programs like Comprehensive Studies Program and Summer Bridge Scholars Program give students a chance to acclimate themselves to college life before being thrown into the bumbling confusion that is freshman year. These programs offer students a continued support network throughout their college experience, including specialized teachers, GSIs and small class sizes. Being placed among a group of students who are in a similar position as your own does wonders to help with the adjustment that is needed, though, in my personal experience, it is not always the best route to take for yourself. The federal government, too, has implemented many programs throughout the country to help students like me. I had the pleasure and honor of working with a group called TRIO Pre-College during my college search and application adventures. They work with students in situations similar to mine to help waive application fees, proofread essays and even take students on campus tours. I am glad to have been assisted by them and look forward to helping programs like theirs in the future any way I can. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to hold the proud title of a Wolverine. There is still a long way to go to make sure all students feel welcome at our university, and all colleges for that matter, but progress and positive change are being made. This situation often goes unnoticed and underappreciated, and I hope I am able to shed some light on the subject for all to gain at least a simple understanding. Opinion The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com 4 — Friday, January 12, 2018 DAYTON HARE Managing Editor 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. ALEXA ST. JOHN Editor in Chief ANU ROY-CHAUDHURY AND ASHLEY ZHANG Editorial Page Editors Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS STEPHANIE TRIERWEILER | COLUMN Carolyn Ayaub Megan Burns Samantha Goldstein Emily Huhman Jeremy Kaplan Sarah Khan Max Lubell Lucas Maiman Madeline Nowicki Anna Polumbo-Levy Jason Rowland Anu Roy-Chaudhury Ali Safawi Sarah Salman Kevin Sweitzer Rebecca Tarnopol Stephanie Trierweiler Ashley Zhang Prioritize mental health in recruiting First generation students, a minority Stephanie Trierweiler can be reached at strier@umich.edu “I encourage the school to consider its students more in its program’s structure.” Lucas Dean can be reached at lbdean@umich.edu LUCAS DEAN | COLUMN “The university must take steps in the right direction and act as an example for other top colleges to follow.” WANT TO JOIN OUR TEAM? Come to The Michigan Daily’s mass meetings! Mass meetings will be located in the newsroom at 420 Maynard on Jan. 16 and 17 at 7 p.m. Hope to see you there! — President Donald Trump speaking to lawmakers in the Oval Office about including immigrants from Haiti, El Savador and African countries as part of the bipartisan immigration deal “ NOTABLE QUOTABLE Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here? ”