When it was first announced that we would be finishing the semester online, I was heartbroken that I wouldn’t be returning to campus or my Notre Dame family, but concerns about working from home and online learning were far from my mind. Not only do I struggle to focus on lectures, get work done with a lot of people in the house and keep to a schedule, but my stress level has increased massively since we began learning at home. After a few weeks of feeling completely overwhelmed, I finally started finding small ways to improve my productivity and mental health that weren’t too ambitious. I made a serious effort to engage with my friends for an hour a week, started exercising again and began playing Dungeons and Dragons with my family on Saturday nights. While all of these things have been helping my morale immensely, our weekly D&D sessions have brought me the most joy. It has quickly become not only key to staying sane in quarantine, but it has helped me grow in ways that will stay with me long after I leave the table. Here are some reasons I love it and I think others would too.
- You Can’t Take Yourself Too Seriously
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In D&D, you have to create a character that you will play. You pick your race, skills, weaknesses and personality, and then it’s up to you to bring them to life (I’m a High Elf and a wizard). My brother is our Dungeon Master (DM), and he often supplements the characters that fill in the storyline with actions and voices. At first, we (all first timers except my dad) were all a bit too timid to add a voice, but I’ve seen everyone, myself included, slowly grow into the characters they created. Especially during this stressful time, I have a habit of taking myself too seriously. As the campaign went on, I learned my way around my character and grew more and more confident. In this way, D&D is pushing me to let go of the self-consciousness I always seem to carry around. Next campaign, my character is definitely getting a voice.
- You Have to Take Risks
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I tend to be a very cautious person, something that was very obvious the first time I had to make a big decision in our campaign. I jumped out a window instead of going downstairs to fight some undead. I lost half my hit points trying to avoid a fight because I was scared and didn’t trust myself. Faced with the same decision today, I would certainly take the fight. I’m a wizard for crying out loud! I can hold my own. This growth encourages me not only to take risks in the game but to trust my skills in real life too.
- It Forces You to Be Creative
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Not every problem in D&D can be solved with a fight. In fact, there are many challenges that require critical thinking and creative approaches. Sometimes the answer is simple, just not obvious. Others, it requires more work to put the puzzle pieces together. Everyone can benefit from exercising their brain, but improving problem solving abilities is particularly valuable to me as I prepare for a career in biological research.
- You Have to Work as a Team
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You can’t survive without the help of your party. It forces you to trust them, but it also requires you to make sacrifices for them. It’s easy, especially as a college student, to feel like all responsibilities and mistakes are on you. However, it’s okay and it’s healthy to let people support you along the way. This is a key part of success in D&D. It also forces you to communicate to get yourself and your party out of sticky situations.
- You Can’t Control Anything Except Your Own Actions
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The situations, characters, monsters and decisions of your teammates are out of your hands. In addition to surprises in the story line, sometimes you have bad rolls. The number of ill-timed natural ones I have rolled in crucial moments is so big that it’s almost funny (rolling a natural one means that basically whatever you are attempting to do or attack will fail—it’s the sad counterpart of the natural 20, which is like an automatic success). This unpredictability means that you have to focus on what you can control: your decisions. This isn’t just true of D&D, but of life. It’s always good to get to practice for when things don’t go your way in a safe space.
- It Takes Your Mind Off of Outside Stress
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Right now I feel like I’m under constant stress. Every morning, I wake up and look at my computer and I already feel disheartened by the work that awaits me with no promise of soccer practice, a trip to LaFun or a stroll by the Dome to break up my day. My stress has been high and my morale has been low, but our weekly D&D sessions give me something to look forward to. Not only that, but when we play, I’m totally focused on the campaign and it banishes the weight of the week. These opportunities to escape have been lifting me up and helping me build a more positive routine.
- It Brings Me Closer to My Family
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The teamwork, weekly appointment and partaking in frequent small victories as a family is great. It gives us a chance to spend time together in a way that’s more active than watching a movie together and it guarantees us some face time among all the work my parents do and homework all three of us kids (and my boyfriend, tuning in via FaceTime) do all week long. Especially since I’ve been away at school for a few years now, it’s great to get to be with them during this time.
- It’s SO Fun!
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We usually play for four or five hours at a time, but it feels so much shorter. It’s fun and exciting, and you just want to keep going! We have snacks and drinks and everyone gets their own set of (mostly) matching dice. It’s relaxing and engaging and nothing but the game occupies my mind.
I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed playing D&D, and even more surprised to realize all the ways it was beneficial to my life. I’m so grateful to have this time with my family in the midst of a scary and stressful time that I’ve been struggling with, and I hope you might try it out and be pleasantly surprised one day too.