Editor’s Note: Editor-in-Chief Devon M. Kurtz sat down with the student coordinator of Mindhood at Dartmouth, Natalie Mendolia. As a part of our continued coverage of Mindhood’s development at Dartmouth and other colleges, The Review wanted to offer one of the leading students the chance to speak on the future of the movement as it grows internationally
What is your role at Mindhood and how did you get involved?
I don’t have a very clear-cut bureaucratic role. I would call myself more of a student leader, or jokingly a “think tanker,” just because I think my strengths lie in brainstorming ideas and figuring out what our mission is for the group and for the movement.
As far as how I got involved in Mindhood, I learned about the movement when, in late spring 2018, my sorority’s summer president reached out with a few details about what the program was. At that point, it was a texting platform that checked in every morning and night with you and would track your mood with an emoji. It would give you some tips on how to be more mindful which I thought was actually really helpful.
I really liked the platform and I think it worked well for a time, but I also think that the summer was a unique environment because there were fewer people on campus. I was also really interested in the specificity of digital wellness. I had been involved in Movement Against Violence and so many other movements for generating social awareness regarding mental health. I really liked that Mindhood was targeting a smaller community in my life in an intentional way.
What was your experience with digital wellness prior to Mindhood?
It wasn’t like I was a part of a similar group in high school or anything— my experience was more personal. I had gone to Catholic School my whole life, but then I transferred to a private school, which was a really different cultural and socio-economic environment. I had the “play outside in the street and you jump around in sprinklers” when I was a kid, so the increased digital presence in my life really hit me around puberty— such formative years—so I think so much of my experience was based on that. Tumblr was such a huge part of high school since it was really an emotional conduit for kids to express themselves. Body image was a pressing issue for a young woman like myself, and it was how I got into my sport. When I transferred to a different high school and moved to a different family in a new state, I was only sixteen—it was a big shift. I had done sports a little bit, but by the time I had gotten into Dartmouth and it was my senior spring, I was looking to get back into a better state of health. So, I ended up following all of these people on YouTube—that’s how I became obsessed with weight lifting. Seeing all of these people, with such extreme workouts, I wanted to emulate that. Now I see how altered and myopic they are, but then I thought they were really cool. Because it was from social media, it didn’t have the fakeness of television. It was like my own glimpse into what their lifestyles are like. By doing what they were doing, I thought I was creating and actualizing who I was, but I think I was just copying and pasting what other people were doing—it just happened to be in athletics. It became a big part of my identity as an athlete because so much of it was fed by the body image culture cultivated in high school through social media platforms. So much of athletics is about physicality that it is difficult to try to not focus on it.
Another experience that contributed to my interest in digital wellness took place after my freshman fall. My dad was chronically ill since he was born, and we were expecting to pass away. I had done this like grief program—specifically a women’s group—and it had people who were dealing with all ranges of mental conditions and stresses. One of the biggest issues that group discussed was getting off of your phone. I was surrounded by people with all sorts of addictions, but many of them all had this issue in common. So many of them said, “You don’t need a broadcast what’s in your life right now. Take time away.” Now, I look back at my Facebook history or my Instagram history or my SnapChat history, and there are big chunks missing during the times I’ve taken off from Dartmouth. I use social media very differently now because of that.
Where has Mindhood been most effective at Dartmouth? What do you feel is the next step?
I thought it was very successful over the summer. I was so surprised to see it work in the fraternities. I think that with our socialized norms, I expected women to be more attuned to the to the issues because something like body image is more generally associated with women compared to men, especially on such a historically male-dominated and heteronormative campus.
I thought that it was most successful in the curiosity and interest that people had. A lot of times people gloss over something and say they’ll do it, but there’s not really a passion behind their interest. But even though the initial texting platform that was developed didn’t wholly last, it has shifted now and the excitement for digital wellness has spread like wildfire. I think more people are aware of the issue—and the fact that I can now walk around see everyone wearing Mindhood hats is just so cool. We really started a conversation and that’s where I would definitely say it was most successful because we’ve seen months later that the conversation has come up in a different way and is continually shifting. Now we have the attention of student leader who want to include Mindhood in their events all over campus in different communities. We have seen interest in things like Mindhood “no-phone” tails.
I think the next step is getting incoming students aware. We brainstormed a freshman mentorship program, because when I had a mentor while coming into Dartmouth, she absolutely changed my Dartmouth experience in such a positive way and such a realistic way. I think that if we could create and foster mentorship where it’s not forced and it’s not superficial, we can not only help students use their phone less, but help them learn how to be more intentional in their use of their phones. It’s not having an institution like Dartmouth instill in us specific values— instead it’s an institution giving us the tools to decide on our own. The autonomy there is very important. It would be so beneficial to train seniors who are interested in this issue because they’re conscious of it and they want to see the change. We can create a more dynamic community—not necessarily better, but more dynamic. The digital illness isolates us, and to see students gain the vocabulary to be able to have a more rigorous dialogue about this pervasive issue would be so rewarding. One of the tenants of dialectical behavioral therapy is interpersonal effectiveness, and I think so much of why we look at our phones is because we have forgotten how to be in the moment and react to stimuli. It sounds so silly—like we’ve become robots or are brainwashed—but it isn’t so crazy. I really do think that integrating Mindhood into our UGA programs, our first-year experience programs, and our mentorship programs could give freshmen this whole new skill set for how to conduct themselves more effectively in an environment. We can give students the tools to improve their wellbeing. And upperclassmen can make it cool to do. We just have to be vulnerable enough and brave enough to tell the incoming students that this issue really matters.
How have you gone about assembling a team to accomplish the goals of Mindhood?
Susan has done a wonderful job of targeting a lot of areas of campus to recruit. I just tried to be a scout in my own life and talk to people about getting more involved. It’s kind of funny because so many people have found out about my involvement with Mindhood through social media. There are so many people on campus who have either been touched by digital illness themselves or have networks where they see it really being a problem. These people want to make a more inviting space, and we want to help them do it.
What makes Dartmouht uniquely poised to facilitate Mindhood?
I think that our culture is steeped in traditions. Some people say that’s problematic, but I think Dartmouth has a deep tradition of passion. It manifests in our social lives, our professional lives, and our academic work. We want to say and do so much. It keeps us constantly yearning for more, which I think is a problem sometimes to our overall mental health. But, there is this wonderful will to persevere in our mentality as a campus.
Related to that, I think that we all want to lead. I found that the most powerful aspect of our campus. We do not want to just stand still and think about things—we want to take action. There’s such a breadth of experience behind the student body here, and despite our competitive natures, we aren’t divided.
It’s not “let me subvert all of your healthy goals for yourself,” it’s “you’re making yourself better, and how can I make myself better? And then, how can we make each other better?” Our competition unites us and advances us together. There’s a vibrant energy and there’s a curiosity that I think if harnessed is just catabolic in a really effective way.
Do you see Mindhood as always being student run, or will the college administration become more involved? Are there benefits/drawbacks to either?
I think the power truly lies in the students. The energy, inspiration, and vision needs to come from the students. It would be so beneficial to have us collaborate with Administration, but I see that as collaboration, nothing more. It’s a very delicate balance of making sure that it’s not “us against them.” There is a larger need for dialogue and overall communication with what the pulse of student body is, and often the administration can’t feel the pulse correctly. This will be seen as more genuine and more emblematic of our desires if it comes from school leaders.
Do you see Mindhood spreading beyond colleges to companies or high schools?
100%! It’s so funny because I came in as a biomedical engineer, and I took Bio 14 and then dropped week 6. And when I was thinking after I took my break and came back, what I was thinking about was what I really wanted to study. I mean I found my major on a whim because I just really liked the class, but for a time I really wanted to go into government, and my most idealistic intention was to work for the US Department of Education because, from my own personal experience with mental health issues, I really wanted to see behavioral health integrated into not only Collegiate institutions but even more in middle schools. I’ve had people comment about the benefits of a religious community like the Catholic Center that I’m a part of, but I think it is a little far reaching to ask everyone to go find a religion and to meditate to bring themselves into a better mental state. But whereas many people in modern American society no longer buy into religion, they are buying into schools. Schools have become such a huge part of a child’s life, and those schools need to be equipped with the tools to support them.
But for adults too, their HR offices are often absolute nightmares. It can be something as simple as teaching someone how to respect their personal boundaries and the other person’s personal boundaries, or how to stop validating themselves by invalidating someone else.
But I think we’ve fallen culturally into a small crevice of constantly looking outside of ourselves, and that’s where I think the ideas of interpersonal effectiveness, and of distress tolerance, and of what it means to be an effective human belong in human dialogue in general.
