November is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is once again covered in wellness graphics, posters and reminders to slow down and take care of ourselves. The intention is good, but the timing is almost ironic, because if there’s one thing students don’t have in November, it’s the time — or bandwidth — to actually “prioritize wellness.”
That’s the core tension: the university promotes wellness at the exact moment its own academic structure makes wellness nearly impossible. Burnout doesn’t show up out of the blue on this campus. It’s a semester-long constant. And somewhere along the way, UW-Madison has blurred the line between what actually counts as mental health support and what simply falls under the umbrella of wellness marketing.
UW-Madison still designates a “midterm week” in the third week of October, but everyone here knows midterms start in early October, late September in some cases, and run practically until right before finals. Exams, papers and labs stack on top of each other without coordination across departments, meaning students don’t get breathing room between academic peaks — just rolling waves of stress. By November, exhaustion isn’t a warning sign; it’s a baseline. And then the university tells students to reach out if they’re struggling, as if the environment causing the struggle is incidental rather than fundamental.
Much of this burnout is treated as a personal responsibility issue, as a matter of better habits, smarter planning or improved self-care. But the reality is that the pressure is structural. The financial divide on campus shapes everything: some students can dedicate all their hours to school, while others balance coursework with part-time or full-time jobs just to afford rent or groceries. Living in Madison isn’t cheap. Neither is being a college student. And when basic stability eats up so much time and energy, wellness becomes one more obligation students are expected to juggle.
Housing only compounds that stress. UW-Madison’s freshman classes keep increasing despite a citywide housing crunch, and students start the search for next year’s leases before Thanksgiving of the current year. That scramble alone creates stress that no mindfulness workshop can realistically counter. Yet the university’s messaging tends to focus on “planning early,” often glossing over the reality that many students already feel behind before the search even begins.
Layered onto academics and finances is the pressure to keep up socially, especially at a school that proudly markets its party culture. The expectation to “work hard, play hard” means exhaustion becomes a badge of honor: something you normalize rather than question. Students often end up cycling between overwork and overstimulation with very little room for actual rest. On this campus, fatigue feels less like a sign to slow down and more like proof you’re doing college “right.”
This is exactly where mental health should enter the picture. In theory, awareness months and wellness initiatives exist to support students during periods of high stress. However, the university’s approach often feels more symbolic than structural. UW-Madison encourages openness, vulnerability and self-reflection, which are all important, but the path from acknowledging stress to receiving meaningful support is not always intuitive or accessible. Even when services and programs are available, navigating them while overwhelmed can feel like another task on an already overloaded to-do list.
UHS has staff who care deeply, and many students find the support they need there. But others are simply unsure how to get started, what resources apply to them or how to fit appointments into an already rigid schedule. The issue isn’t about placing blame on any office or provider. It’s about recognizing that when the overall campus environment pushes students to their limits, even small logistical barriers can feel insurmountable. The gap between encouraging students to seek help and making that help easily reachable is where wellness messaging starts to blur with actual mental health support.
This is the heart of the disconnect. Wellness campaigns usually focus on individual actions: sleep more, manage your time better, practice mindfulness, drink water, attend yoga. But these suggestions do little to address the systemic pressures, from financial strain to academic overload, housing instability and cultural expectations — that make burnout a defining feature of campus life. When the university places the responsibility for wellness entirely on students, it shifts the focus away from the conditions that make wellness fundamentally difficult.
If UW-Madison wants to genuinely support students’ mental health, it needs to go beyond posters and programming. That means rethinking the nonstop midterm cycle, addressing housing pressures before expanding enrollment further, creating systems that acknowledge financial disparities and ensuring mental health support is straightforward to access, not something students have to navigate while already overwhelmed. It means cultivating a campus culture where balance isn’t an aspirational buzzword but a realistic expectation.
Awareness months matter. But awareness alone isn’t enough. Students already know they’re struggling; many knew long before the graphics went up. What they need to do now is breathe deeply or drink water, not hear constant reminders of their struggles. They also need a university willing to examine the structures contributing to burnout in the first place. Wellness isn’t an aesthetic. It’s a responsibility — and one this university must take seriously if it wants students to not just survive the semester, but actually thrive here.
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