Once Upon a Time…I was Perfect. Some people can't wait for high school to end. The constant comparison between students, the need to be the best, the idea that average is not even good enough to make it on a scale of excellence. It's no secret that [School Name] High School is one of the most challenging and rewarding educational facilities in [the state]. Students file out of a classroom after a test and complain of how bad they did, when really they might have gotten a B-. Outside in the real world, adults wish that trivial events like these were the least of their worries, but to a high schooler, what goes on between these brick walls [is] everything. When trying to get into college, students try to rack up the number of clubs and hours of community service to place on their college admissions applications. But the perfection doesn't lie in numbers, it is reflected in the effort put forth by every student in the school.These comments in a high school yearbook capture in a succinct and personal way the central elements of perfectionism as they have been described for decades by clinicians, researchers, and journalists. The student points to the relevance of striving to be "the best" and the downstream implications of effort and credentials established during high school. She alludes to the distortions that might befall perfectionists, the pernicious ways in which they might interpret their performance and how the intensity and distress engendered by those interpretations may notThe authors are grateful to Jana Mohammad Al-Nahhas, Angela Montfort, and Marieke van Nuenen for their assistance with this chapter.

Complementary hypotheses suggest that perfectionism may (a) cause later stress (stress generation) and (b) moderate the effects of stress on subsequent outcomes (stress enhancement). The present study tested these hypotheses with a sample of 432 first-time college freshmen pursuing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors. Students completed baseline perfectionism scales and repeated measures for perceived academic stress at monthly intervals 3 times in the fall semester and 3 times in the spring semester. Course grade data from institutional records were used to calculate first-year STEM grade point average (GPA) as the distal outcome in analyses. Gender, high school GPA, SAT math scores, and university were covariates. Latent profile analyses supported adaptive, maladaptive, and nonperfectionist classes and latent class growth mixture models identified distinctly low, moderate, and high patterns of academic stress over the year. Latent transition analyses indicated that maladaptive perfectionists were likely to experience moderate or high stress (none transitioned to low stress), and adaptive perfectionists were likely to have low or moderate stress (only 4% transitioned to high stress). Women were substantially more likely than male maladaptive perfectionists to experience high stress. Low-stressed adaptive perfectionists followed by moderately stressed maladaptive perfectionists had relatively higher GPAs than other groups. Subgroups of perfectionists who transitioned to the next higher stress level had substantially lower GPAs than other groups. Overall, results were consistent with stress-generation and stress-enhancement hypotheses regarding perfectionists. Findings suggested implications for prevention and intervention with perfectionistic STEM students that should be implemented early in their college experience.

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We examined implications of evaluative threat on the ability to regulate emotions for first-time college freshmen completing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) majors (N ϭ 432). Students completed the Evaluative Threat in STEM Scale (Ahlqvist, London, & Rosenthal, 2013) and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004) at six intervals. Cross-sectional and longitudinal measurement invariance was supported. Women reported greater evaluative threat than men, but they did not differ from men in difficulties regulating emotion. Both constructs showed moderate relative stability over time. Using latent change score analyses, significant positive deceleration change patterns indicated that four of the emotion regulation difficulties (Lack of Emotional Awareness, Lack of Emotional Clarity, Impulse Control Difficulties, and Nonacceptance of Emotional Responses) and evaluative threat tended to increase (worsen) over the year, but the increases also slowed (i.e., plateaued) over time. Compared with men, women initially reported higher evaluative threat than men did, but these differences decreased over the year, as women decelerated more quickly than men did. In terms of cross-coupling effects, we found that evaluative threat was associated with subsequent difficulty in identifying strategies to cope with unpleasant emotions. There were no cross-coupling effects for emotion regulation predicting subsequent change in evaluative threat. Gender moderated the Evaluative Threat-to-DERS coupling effects for Lack of Emotional Clarity, Difficulties in Goal-Directed Behavior, and Nonacceptance of Emotional Responses. We discuss implications of evaluative threat for depleting coping resources and some potential psychoeducational and preventive interventions to support students in STEM majors. Public Significance StatementThis study asked freshmen science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students to report their levels of evaluation threat (stress) and difficulties coping with emotions for the first year in their major. Women had higher levels of evaluation threat (stress) than men in STEM majors. For women and men, higher threat led to fewer strategies to cope with unpleasant feelings. Changes in other emotion regulation difficulties were affected differently by evaluation threat for women and men. Several findings suggested that the students might benefit from stress management interventions early in their time at the university.

LGBTQ+ college students (undergraduate and graduate) living with disabilities may have visible/apparent or invisible/nonapparent conditions that are either congenital or acquired. Disabilities include mental/behavioral health, developmental, neuropsychological, cognitive, sensory, physical, motor, medical/chronic illness and other physical conditions.• LGBTQ+ college students living with disabilities encounter ableism, disablism, microaggressions, stigma, oppression, and other minority related stressors from a variety of communities, including the disability, sexual, and gender minority communities.• LGBTQ+ students living with disabilities are resilient in the face of adversity.• Strategies, practices, and interventions in higher education should focus on incorporating Universal Design principles, bolstering resilience, easing transitions into college and into the world-of-work, upholding and creating affirming policies, and helping to develop welcoming and inclusive campus environments.Disability communities are highly diverse in terms of race,