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So I just had a super humbling, & distressing, interaction with an undergraduate. Today I presented @nvancleve Wellness and Health statement, & told the students that while I've always advocated this in one-on-one conversations, for the first time I was making it "class policy 1/
The student came in and sat down and said that they wanted to thank me for bringing up this issue formally in class. They told me about some of their struggles the past few years with exactly what is in the Wellness and Health Statement: working themselves to exhaustion 2/
They then told me of times they tried to approach faculty about turning in an assignment late, or asking for an extension, & faculty rebuffing them, even though the student *KNEW* they needed to just take a breath to be able to do their best work because they were exhausted 3/
And the student was crying in my office and thanking me for essentially just being human and empathetic, and treating students the way I would hope my daughters will be treated someday. And while I was incredibly touched and humbled by their words, but also pissed 4/
I mean WTF are my colleagues across campus(es) doing such that they can't see they need to support these students. And realistically what is one day on an assignment going to do? Or giving students a free mental health day? Especially those of us that are at institutions 5/
that are working class/1st gen. These kids are working stupid long hours just to be in our classrooms, you SHOULD have some idea about what these students are going through, show some empathy. Why do we have to keep perpetuating the "if I suffered, all suffer" mentality 6/
So thanks to @nvancleve for the Wellness and Health Statement, thank you to the student who came by my office for their honesty, and thanks to all the faculty at University of Chicago and Stanford that showed me some empathy when I was there, 7/
because those institutions REALLY didn't care how I was doing back in the day. I'm including an image of the statement here too. 8/8 
