> This is scarily obvious when I’ve worked with college students and early 20s juniors lately: A subset of them speak of everything human nature in medical and therapy speak. Common human experiences like being sad about something or having a tough day are immediately amplified into full-blown medical terms like “I’m having a depressive episode today” (which is gone by tomorrow). Being a little nervous about something is “I’m having a panic attack”. Remembering an unpleasant disagreement at work “gives me PTSD”. When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”.

Somewhat unrelated, but I complain about the same thing in software parlance. Our work gets divided up into "sprints". A SPRINT is traditionally something you do a handful of times in your life, like when you're fleeing for your life, pursued by a bear. And then when you're a safe distance away and the adrenaline wears off, you collapse from exhaustion and rest. The idea that your employer would use that term to describe how they envision their employees structuring every day of the rest of their lives is either painfully tone-deaf, or even worse, is a brutally honest view of how they regard employee burnout.

Some of us do sprint workouts every week or two as part of sports training. Those are exhausting and require some recovery but you won't get faster unless you put in work.

But your point about misleading terminology is correct. That's why modern methodologies such as Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) have adopted the more neutral term "iterations" which doesn't imply anything about velocity.

https://framework.scaledagile.com/iterations/