Between frat juice and vomit in our elevators, we at Dartmouth don't exactly have a knack for creating an environment that's conducive to good health. While we do whatever we can to succeed and make the most of our time here, filling our schedules to the brim working our brains until they hurt and ponging until the wee hours of the morning we almost always fail to take care of ourselves, even though we know how to.
"It's really common sense getting enough sleep, eating well, keeping regular hours and a regular schedule [and] exercise," Paula Bergeron, co-manager of the inpatient department of Dartmouth College Health Service, said. "When you're in the college environment, those kind of habits go by the wayside."
The truth is that the smallest and simplest changes to our lifestyle can make the big things that we do much easier. I don't know about you, but I can usually write a paper better when I don't feel like my forehead is on fire.
"Most of these viral-based illnesses and mini-outbreaks that we see at Dartmouth could be significantly minimized if everyone in our college community practiced regularly good hygiene," College Health Services Director Jack Turco said. "Good hygiene would include washing hands and using hand sanitizers regularly. These are things that we have always been taught to do, but if we practiced what is preached, we could reduce the frequency of these outbreaks."
I know what you're thinking. You just don't have the time for these things! You have to go from practice to class to practice again, and then you have three meetings and homework.
You barely have time to fit the three plates of FoCo food you need at dinner into your mouth when will you ever have time to wash your hands?
The truth, however, is that three days of violent vomiting and diarrhea can be warded off in the less than half a minute that it takes to wash your hands properly.
"That doesn't mean just after you use the bathroom you put your hands hand under water," Bergeron said. "It means a good 20 to 30 seconds of using warm water and soap and really scrubbing your hands."
And Bergeron knows what she's talking about. In fact, she experienced the dirtiness of the Dartmouth environment firsthand when she was able to tour a few select fraternities, sororities and dorms.
"It was quite an eye-opener," Bergeron said. "In close quarters, if someone is sick, you're spreading germs and catching germs, and it's just that combined with the close environment that makes it kind of like a petri dish where it's easy to pick things up."
On top of real illnesses, our stressful lifestyles can also drop us into lower states of functioning.
"Dartmouth is a very competitive place that can really stress students out," Turco said. "Students often feel that they are in the minority when they feel stressed out, when in reality, most students feel this way during their college careers."
And as if avoiding our sick roommate and carving out 30 seconds of hand washing weren't hard enough already, according to Turco, "good hygiene" also means being sufficiently rested to counteract this stress.
Then again, many Dartmouth students adopt alternative methods of combatting stress, namely alcohol.
"Unfortunately, alcohol significantly decreases the quality of sleep and then only leads to more sleep deprivation," Turco said. "Usually, alcohol in this way is a form of self-medication, which doesn't do any good."
All right, so maybe we have to abide by certain norms to keep us healthy. What a novel concept.
Real talk, though, it's probably better to learn how to stay flu-free and well-functioning now than when you're trying to juggle health issues with a full-time job.
"If in college you learn to deal with stress by abusing alcohol or by running, then five years from now, these methods will often remain your approach to deal with stress," Turco said. "One of the things that we try to teach as a part of a liberal arts education is for students to take care of their own health by practicing good hygiene and acquiring and maintaining good personal health habits."
Need an incentive to wash your hands and sleep more? Think of good health as an easy "competitive advantage" over your classmates when you're perfecting your assignment as they puke their brains out.
As much as we give excuses for not being able to stay healthy, the truth is that learning to take care of ourselves is as important to our education as anything else we do here and is one of the easiest things we as students can do to ensure our success.
