14 Take A Day for Yourself: A Student’s PLN

I feel like with all of life’s adventures and stressors we all deserve to take an occasional mental health day. Mental health days give you a chance to

relax your mind and refresh yourself. I believe that these days are very important to have regardless of deadlines that you may have due. One of your biggest priorities should honestly be your well being and how productive you are relates to how you are feeling at that time in your life.

I was scrolling through twitter a couple days ago and I came across a very cool article from Psychology Today called, “How to Know When To Take a Mental Health Day.” I thought the article was fascinating because with school work, work, finding a job after college, finding a place to live after college, working on my artwork for my exhibition, I definitely feel the stress of this semester building up on me. Knowing myself, I don’t really enjoy skipping classes because I don’t like getting behind in schoolwork but there definitely comes a point where I know that I have too many priorities at once and I need to take a day for myself. At first I felt guilty about skipping classes, however, after reading this article I believe taking a mental health day contributes to your productivity in the long run.

Some of the key points in the article include; treat mental health like physical health, neglecting you, and leaders need to care about employee’s mental health. Mental health definitely corresponds to physical health because when I get really stressed out, my immune system weakens and I usually end up getting sick. Never neglect yourself, even if you think you’re being selfish. Between balancing school work, sorority events and creating artwork I always need to have some time for myself. Over the summer and into this fall I have been going on solo hikes and hiking has helped me clear my mind.

I found this fact in the article interesting, “The federal Department of Health and Human Services estimates that only 17% of the US population is functioning at optimal mental health.” This statistic is disappointing to me because I feel like bosses should allow an occasional mental health day for their employees. With mental health days employees will be able to be more productive and happy at their jobs. This statement applies to life in general, sometimes you just have to take a day for yourself and there’s nothing wrong with that!