Students Think They're Struggling Alone. The Script Says They Should Be Thriving.

In Inside Higher Ed, Joshua Bay talks with Harvard developmental psychologist Alexis Redding in What Are We Missing About Student Mental Health? Her argument is that student well-being is shaped by the whole college experience, from the admissions pressure before students arrive to the transition after they leave, and not by the counseling center alone. She urges colleges to separate clinical needs from the ordinary struggles of growing up, to design for commuters, adult learners, veterans, student parents and first-generation students, and to keep showing up for students long after orientation week ends.

It is a thoughtful, practical conversation. One observation in it explains more than the rest: students "all think that they are struggling alone."

The Story Students Are Handed

Redding points to the cultural promise that college will be the best four years of your life. Students arrive carrying that script. When reality doesn't match it, most of them don't question the story. They question themselves.

So they edit. They post the highlights, nod along in the hallway and tell their parents everything is great. Because almost everyone is performing the same story, almost everyone concludes they are the only one falling short of it. The loneliness Redding describes is partly the cost of that performance. When you hide the real version of yourself, nobody can meet it.

Parents feel this too. Many of us told our kids those years would be the best of their lives because we wanted them to look forward to college. The intention was love. The effect can be a standard no real semester can meet, and one more reason to hide the parts that don't fit the picture.

I call this the edit: the quiet adjustments people make to fit the room they think they are supposed to belong in. Adults do it at work every day. Students learn it earlier than we realize, from application essays written to impress and feeds built on comparison. By the time they reach campus, many are fluent in presenting a version of themselves that was designed for approval rather than drawn from who they are.

Built for One Student, Experienced by Many

Redding gives a simple example. A commuter student finds key campus offices, from the dean of students to counseling, hard to reach during the hours she is actually on campus. No one intended that. But a student experiences it as a message: this place was not built for someone like me.

Colleges need consistency. Reliable services, clear policies and programs that work the same way for thousands of students are what allow an institution to serve people well at scale. The problem appears when the design assumes one typical student and asks everyone else to adjust. Fixing that starts with letting real students, in all their variety, shape how the system is used. Redding suggests focus groups and walking through services from different students' points of view. That is a good start, because it begins with knowing the student rather than counting them.

Her most practical idea is also the most human: create low-stakes chances for students to ask basic questions, through warm syllabus language and approachable faculty and advisors. A small question often opens the door to a harder one. Being known by even one caring adult changes what a student believes about their own struggle. I made a similar case for younger kids in Room to Roam Is Not Enough: freedom matters, but young people also need room to be themselves.

What Parents and Educators Can Do Now

Retire the script at home. Tell your student that college will include hard stretches, and that a hard stretch is normal and says nothing final about who they are.

Ask better questions than "How's school?" Try "What has surprised you?" or "What's been harder than you expected?" Questions like these give a student permission to answer honestly instead of performing.

If you teach or advise, make the small question easy to ask. Say it out loud in the first week, and say it again at midterms, when Redding notes many students hit a low point.

Help students explore who they are, not only what they will major in. Redding argues that student success should include that exploration, and I agree. It is the foundation of real career readiness and of the human skills employers keep asking for. Students who understand what they naturally solve for, knowing it will evolve as they do, make better decisions and recover faster when a plan falls apart.

The goal is not a better story about college. It is a campus, and a home, where students feel safe enough to stop performing the one they were given. When one student says out loud that this is harder than they expected, it gives everyone around them permission to do the same.

Loneliness grows in the distance between who we are and who we believe we are supposed to be.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.