The PursuIIT of Happyness
Introduction
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are among the most difficult schools in the world to get into. The University of Oxford accepts one out of five applicants. IITs take in just one out of
100. While growing up, we observe the reverence our families have for cousins who crack
IIT-JEE, and how the newspapers never miss a chance to highlight the top salaries and other achievements of IITians. So it comes of little surprise that for any child with ambitions of becoming an engineer, getting into an IIT looks like the pinnacle of achievement. So, with a single-minded focus on achieving this goal, we start running the race to chase after “The IIT Dream”.
However, most of the people who put in the requisite work, and get the results they need to reach IIT and realise this dream, find themselves lacking the satisfaction that they always imagined getting when they put in the 2+ years of work getting to IIT. Constantly under pressure from their peers, and carrying high expectations from their families, and especially themselves, it’s not always an easy ride for a student at IIT. And with the rising number of cases of self-harm, mental health issues and suicides across IIT - it becomes imperative to find out why the joy of getting into one’s dream college wears off before it even sets in.
The purpose of this article is to try and find out the reasons for unhappiness among the spectrum of the student demographic and to appropriately gauge the happiness and satisfaction levels. Since measuring these levels is a difficult task, BSP floated the first-ever institute scale student happiness and satisfaction survey, to strike up the stigmatised conversation about mental health. It received an overwhelming response, gathering about 1038 entries over a period of 7 days from both UG and PG students, across various disciplines, years and backgrounds in IITD. Hence the data collected, and the analysis that follows should be a reasonable estimate of the IIT Delhi student body as a whole.
About the Survey
Containing around 25 questions and completely anonymous and voluntary, the survey was floated by BSP, IITD internally through webmail, WhatsApp and Facebook groups. It contained two sections - the first related to the social circles, sleeping habits, happiness and satisfaction levels of respondents, while the second asked about their use of Institute sanctioned counselling services (SCS, YourDost) and their opinion about these services. The survey
gathered over 1039 entries within a week - with 782 UG entries (roughly 21.5% of the total UG strength) and 257 PG entries.
Among those who responded, 378 were in the first year, 292 in the second, 176 in the third, 150 in the fourth, and 42 students in their fifth (or higher) years of study respectively in their particular fields of study. This also correlates to how long a time these respondents have spent in IIT so far.
The factors considered and analysed in this form are only indicative and non-exhaustive. Measuring stress and happiness levels is a challenging task - especially since stress levels are expected to vary greatly during the semester, and reach its peak before exams or important deadlines stacked one after the other. This survey was conducted in the third week of January, about 1.5 weeks before Minor 1. We also acknowledge that different individuals have a varied level of responses to different stress-inducing stimuli and a highly relativistic concept of what happiness is and how happy and content they are with lives in the status quo. Hence while designing this survey we set up some trustable precedents to look up to, to correlate the factors that cause happiness or contentment in most people, with how IITians themselves rate their happiness with their lives, both academically and socially. Finally, we talk about the institute sanctioned services to combat mental health issues - namely the Student Counselling Services (SCS), YourDost, and student’s opinion about these services. Let’s delve into the reasons behind those dark circles, stress lines and receding hairlines.
Ain’t no rest for the wicked? (Aliter - Sleep is for the weak)
Between classes, exams, assignments, club activities and deadlines, IITians aren’t getting nearly enough sleep each night, which can have a major impact on their physical and mental health as well as their GPAs. Sleep deprivation seems to go hand in hand with college life - where the only way to make enough time for everything comes down to sleeping less. But catching enough Z’s can help you earn more A’s. Everyone has heard that an average adult needs at least 6 - 8 hours of daily sleep, but sleeping early and waking early can be of benefit too, a study suggests.
The average IITian seems to deviate far from this ideal behaviour though. Here are the sleeping times for UG students of IIT Delhi on usual academic days.
Here is the same for the PG Students.
A simple analysis shows that people with extreme bedtimes (3 am - 5 am and 5 am +) remain a minority. Almost half (48.7%) of UG students go to sleep at 1 am - 3 am, and overall 76.7% UG studentssleep between 12 am - 3 am.Compared to 28.5% and 50.8% respectively for the PG students, there is a significant difference in trends of bedtime, with the PG students seemingly more capable of managing a schedule with a more reasonable bedtime. For example, 22.3% PG students sleep between 11 pm-midnight, which on the UG side is a meagre 9.1% of the total students. The most popular sleeping time is 1 am - 3 am on the UG side, and 12 am - 1 am on the PG side.
What is interesting is how it will compare with the amount of sleep. Here are the hours of sleep UG students get on usual days -
Here are the same stats for PG students :
The number of hours slept must be viewed in conjunction with the bedtime statistics. Last time we established how the PG students statistics show a trend towards earlier bedtimes.
As previously, people with <4 and>8 hours of sleep are a minority for both UG and PG
populations. Interesting trends emerge as we go higher. Only 32.9% of UG students sleep for
6-7 hours, and 31.2% sleep for 5-6 hours. 7-8 hours bracket shows only 16.3% population. When compared to PG students, they show respective percentage figures of 42.6%,18.8% and 24.2%. So overall trend points towards not only more reasonable sleep timings but also towards more sleep in general for the PG students. This might be attributed to more awareness towards health due to being at a more advanced stage in life, but that is hypothetical.
Note that a very considerable chunk of the UG population, about 46.7%, sleeps less than 6 hours a day. Their ranks are joined by about 28% of the PG population. That is below the recommended amount of sleep a healthy adult should be getting and might invite unhealthy repercussions for their minds and body. More interesting trends are revealed when the sleep times are analysed in conjunction with the bedtimes. Ideally, to wake up in time to grab 6-7 hours of sleep and breakfast for that 8 am class students should sleep by 12.30 - 1. This is where a huge chunk of both UG and PG population falls out by far, which could imply most people would be either inclined to miss breakfast or miss the morning class itself, which could affect their health and academic performance.
The exam season brings with it not just increased stress and business for the night mess, but also an aggravated period of sleep deprivation. As shown below, a whopping 76.3% of UG respondents reported getting less than the recommended safe 6 hours of sleep during this period, with 27.5% people entering the “less than 4-hour zone”.
Running a similar analysis on our PG respondents reveals a whopping 71.9% students getting less than the recommended safe 6 hours of sleep during this period, with 17.2% people entering the “less than 4-hour zone”. Unlike before, these numbers are almost comparable to the UG students. Does this imply students are panicky during exam time irrespective of their degree?
So, is IIT to blame for the sleep deprivation of its students? Is the hypercompetitive nature of our academic space literally taking our sleep away? Well, Yes…. But also No.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, the ideal sleep range for young adults (18 - 25 years) is 7 - 9 hours. A healthy 70% of students slept within this optimal range before coming to IIT but this figure drastically reduces to 21% after coming to IIT and to a very low figure of just 13.7% during minors. (with little to no major variations across the years of study). The foundation states that sleeping less than 7 hours also increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses. It also debunks the current notion that studying more during exams at the cost of your sleep will get you good grades. Here are the data for UG and PG students -
PG -
