He’s already at cc. From some of his other posts, not sure he’s serious.
The Yale letter is so touching. She taps into what many of us appreciate about various experiences. In effect, she “could breathe” there.
Its psychological that positive messages tend to resonate more.
That’s beside the point, IMO… 42% of students are seeking mental health counseling. That’s damn near half the school! Doesn’t that strike anyone as a little crazy?
No. It strikes me as healthy to be aware that one may be having trouble coping and reach out for help. Anyway what’s the definition of reaching out? Is it intense counseling because you’re ready to jump off the roof, or is it maybe participation in a stress reduction seminar (playing with puppies, whatever)?
Ha ha. At Cornell, they actually have a program wherein an organization bring in dogs to the campus for the students to play with as a stress reliever.
Oh, no doubt… I agree with you that it’s a good thing students are getting assistance. I was more concerned at the number of students who have mental health problems to begin with. 42% seems mind boggling to me!
“Ha ha. At Cornell, they actually have a program wherein an organization bring in dogs to the campus for the students to play with as a stress reliever.”
Yes, that’s the point. Many schools are offering similar stress relievers. Is participation in play-with-the-puppies-before-finals counted as a touchpoint? Because that’s a very different touchpoint from I’m-one-step-away-from-jumping-off-the-roof. (I’m not trivializing suicide, btw, as a close family member died that way - just making the point that there are different levels of touchpoints.)
Yikes. Going to speak with someone doesn’t mean “mental health problems.” Thats kind of the old fashioned quick label that did cause people to stifle until they exploded. Visits can be for umpteen reasons, including minor. Kudos that they can comfortably admit they used the resources.
There is no confirmation that the 42% seeking resources were seeking them specifically related to Harvard University. Does it occur to some of you that the extended period of adolescence (which includes the college years and shortly thereafter) is a period of change, questioning, doubt, even crisis? I remember this period so clearly. It’s the period of greatest change in the human person.
What’s wrong with people here? What’s happened to your memories? Adolescents who don’t attend college but seek employment, military service, etc. are also going through the same changes, self-questioning, etc. that college students are. They often seek out counseling as well. For heaven’s sake. The difference is the intensity of the circumstances in a college environment because while you are studying your brains off in a time-limited structure of 4 years, you are ALSO navigating non-academic issues such as dating/romantic relationships – current or past. And typically this can be a rocky period for parent-child relationships because of the drive toward greater independence and all of the ambiguity & even volatility that brings to those relationships.
Most of it is normal.
Sheesh.
The large number of students that are struggling with mental health challenges is a real issue, but it’s not an ivy/elite college specific one. For example, the ACHA survey of ~150 colleges found in the past 12 months 54% “Felt overwhelming anxiety”, 33% “Felt so depressed that it was difficult to function”, and 8% “Seriously considered suicide”. Ivies tend to have similar numbers. For example, Dartmouth reported within +/- ~5% of the ACHA national survey for stress, anxiety, and depression affecting academic performance in the past 12 months (the other questions were not similar enough to compare).
You know, the 1500 SAT kid at Nowheresville State U can be just as nervous about rooming with a new person / living away from home / understanding the material in math class / upset over the breakup with his girlfriend as the 2300 SAT kid at Harvard. Come on now. This is part of LIFE.
To be clear I like Cornell, but after this article.It changed the way i look at ivy schools
@Mastadon cool. Thanks for that. Looks like Brown and the ivies certainly aren’t any worse than other schools.
Well, even in that “love letter” to Yale, we can find that stress of being in a place where all the people around you are very driven and talented. She says this:
"When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.
For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…"
To be clear I like Cornell, but after this article.It changed the way i look at ivy schools
[/Quote]
Nay, mate, clowns should stay in carnivals and kings’ courts. We are sophisticated and intelligent people, the citizens of this forum, the most intelligent life to be found this side of th’ moon, which, Ariosto’s man says, has everything but folly. (Though we will fix that deficiency before long.) Have you seen in a lark in a cage, nuncle? He goes to feast, but at that feast, he does not eat but is eaten. Look I like a lute? Then why do you try to string me like one? You set a mousetrap and become the mouse yourself. What is this, that we should have men turning into mice: Volpone? (Though the inimitable Zhuangzi cannot tell the difference between sleeping and waking, or men and butterflies, and the same applies to men and mice, because no difference exists, because the difference is ineffable.) On the grandest throne in the world, each monarch must sit on his own…
shadow.
Have you ever felt that your shadow is trying to devour you? Ferdinand did, but he was a lycanthrope, though if he were ruled by his appetites, the which Plato in his Phaedrus describes as the ugly horse, and in the Republic as a beast, and Freud corroborates from the opposite “side,” perhaps we would all like to overcome our shadows. For my part, I would rather be a shadow than a man, or even an antimatter rather than a matter, because manner is too much with us in this world, a lamentable thing that Tolstoy much deplores with the depiction of the soirées, and matter is God or gods, who are death (and perhaps dead), so life is death, and death is life, as Segismundo might have recognized in La vida es sueño.
N.B. Erasmus’s Praise of Folly is oddly apropos, as is the lovely Genji Monogatari.
^^^ What on Earth…
Bottom line, if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
I’m only a high school student and have no plans on attending an Ivy League School. So there is probably not much merit to my opinion but I am going to give it anyways.
Ivy League ready goes much further than what can be seen on a transcript. I almost feel like the students who were described by the author of this article as being “ruined” by the Ivy League experience are students who have never faced adversity before in their lives. Not even to the smallest extent, academically or otherwise. To give an example I know of many students who were straight A students up through middle school and including freshman year. The first time they took an AP Course (Usually AP Euro or AP Biology) in their sophomore year a lot of these straight A students immediately tanked. They lost every ounce of confidence at the first sign of adversity. I feel like this is a similar situation except it took a larger challenge for these students to finally face adversity. And a lot of students do crumble when they are finally challenged. I have seen it happen many times first hand.
@RHSclassof16, kids of CC parents don’t stumble. All of them are destined to be Rhodes Scholars 
@finalchild @RHSclassof2016 Rhodes Scholar? Definitely - if they go to UAlabama.
But kidding aside, that’s a good point RHS (from another high school student, lol). I guess this kid’s way of dealing with the adversity in high school was drugs. And that didn’t work in college, I guess.
I’m not sure the author, whatever you want to say about him, has really struggled academically, though, has he?