william and mary

after having googled recent news about william and mary and having found loads of scandals surrounding this uni, i came across a link to this site which was written by a fellow student that reads: ‘do not go to william and mary’. oh hold-on, before your ask: yes, i attended w&m.

it’s worth noting: you can tell when a school employed moderator/poser steps-in to drop a settle reply. it goes something like this: ‘well, the OP is entitled to his/her opinion (acknowledgement) and I am sorry to hear that (empathy)…, but this is your personal experience reflecting your problems, as you brought this onto yourself because… (classic w&m double faced hypocrisy)… blah, blah, blah’ - so my responses to all future ‘moderator/poser replies’ can be summed up in two words. in turn below are a few items i would like to share with everyone else:

0.0 w&m has one of the highest student suicide rates. It’s.a.fact. is this because the academics are so rigorous? NO! NO! and NO! if that was the case a large per cent of yale, mit, harvard and other top-10 universities’ students would be ‘dropping dead like flies’ on a yearly-basis… so why is w&m suicide rate is so high?

0.1 just to preface: publicly known w&m suicide cases are only a ‘tip of the iceberg’, in my opinion! Now stop and think about that… Here is what I remember: there were many students on-and-off campus who entered w&m healthy but began suffering from a depression shortly thereafter. no-one keep track of that. of course not, its bad stats!

0.2 so the answer to why: it’s the environment.

0.3 here is one part of a problem: early on in the class professors select a few as ‘an elite’ and label a few as ‘black sheep’. you guessed it: i was one of the black sheep. takes one, to know about it. in turn, no matter how good your work is, if you are ‘labeled’, your grade has always a limit. this means your future has a limit and the professors know that. added this ‘label’ outlines social dynamics between students as well.

NOW! just to fast forward as a side-bar for all of you judgmental humans: i ended up transferring from w&m and i’m finishing my 5th and final surgical residency year. and NOPE, I’m not showing off, just case in point about the ‘environment’.

0.4 in principal there are two types of lecturers: professors that ‘teach to teach’ and those that showcase how clever they are! take a guess which is the w&m dominant type?

0.5 racism? exists, politically correct one, yes, settle one, yes, without being able to prove type of one… you get the point

0.5 reading between the lines
while the environment is nothing less but high acid, the university could not and can not afford to take a ‘rip into their reputation’! so what do they do? simple: w&m made a special effort to remove any possible depressed ‘future suspect culprit’ out of the ‘system’. as you can imagine, this creates paranoia even for ones that are not depressed. sadly but true. a dab of fake-empathy following by effective strategy to label the student, followed by eventually ‘pushing-the-student-out’. the co-operation between academic staff is at the highest levels. all of this happens while collecting the tuition fee in advance and not refunding your student loan back to the lender when/if you suspend your attendance…

0.6 campus psychology council is a joke. humiliating personal experience to say the least.

The above is my personal opinion and in terms of which university is better or worst: I have no ‘dog in that fight’. however I will note that most academic staff that I met in w&m, to me, were and are a bunch of provincial old folks pretending to be high society not worthy to educate. It’s a public school, clean the theatre!

Your post is not well-written or clearly reasoned. Perhaps you were not a good fit for W&M? What is your point in writing this? How long were you a student there?

“Loads of scandals”? Which ones exactly? How many students did you personally know who were treated for depression? How many committed suicide while you were on campus? What do you think the administration should do to address the issue(s)?

You make many accusations without a lot of basis. As presented, I can’t take your post seriously.

NB: I have no connection to W&M except that I am a Virginia resident and my son was accepted there (but did not enroll).

My son says this is #3 this year and the school is half the size of UVA. Very sad:

http://www.wdbj7.com/content/news/Police-investigating-death-of-William–Mary-student-397301531.html

I know at least three students there now and they are all fine people. I hope they stay healthy.

The linked article mentions the student had suffered a cardiac arrest that does not sound like a suicide to me. Am I missing something?

dscottvb says: your post is not well written. my reply: i was not english major, if you read carefully i am in last year med residency…

BillW13 says: ’ the link article mentions student cardiac arrest’. which article?

2015-2016 suicides:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/15/suicide-at-william-mary-fourth-this-year-triggers-concern-about-mental-health/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/30/i-wish-i-had-never-told-my-brother-to-get-help-from-our-college-when-he-was-suicidal/

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/04/16/william-and-mary-faces-fourth-suicide-year

http://www.wm.edu/news/announcements/2015/notice-to-the-community.php

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/446104.page

2010-2015:

http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/11/26/third_suicide_at_william_and_mary_illustrates_challenge_of_prevention/

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/4116/

http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/11/doyle-william-and-mary-mental-health

dscottvb says: ’ your post is not well written, perhaps you were not a good fit for w&m’
my reply: you sound very much like one of the w&m hypocrites! + consider this:

  1. i got into w&m, so good enough!
  2. is your son good enough for med school? or is he studying english and art..

my post is written very well, thank you very much!

read this article:
'Cassy Smith, sister of Ian Smith, who committed suicide on w&m campus says: ‘i wish I never told him to go to college psychology counselling’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/30/i-wish-i-had-never-told-my-brother-to-get-help-from-our-college-when-he-was-suicidal/

people deserve to know the truth!

here is real and confidential feedback about w&m:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Virginia/comments/32xcda/suicide_at_william_mary_fourth_student_death_this/#bottom-comments

suicide school, why? you be the judge…

I am slightly alarmed that you will be practicing medicine. I agree that your post is very poorly written and at times does not even make sense. Having attended W&M myself (albeit many years ago), I can tell you that this nickname has been around for over 25 years. The depression/anxiety and suicide issue among high-performing college students is a concern but not only for W&M. My husband (who also attended W&M) and myself have always agreed that William and Mary’s focus on writing, both in the humanities and sciences was one of the best preparations for any career. From reading your post, I honestly find it hard to believe that you were a student there. I should mention that both my husband and I probably fell in the bottom 25% there, went out too much and still had an amazing experience. Was it challenging at times? Absolutely…but always manageable.

@wm00

This is exceptionally poorly written and has little basis in fact. W&M’s suicide rate is not one of the highest, just look it up.

As for professors, that’s just patently false. Not sure how long you were here, but three years in and I’ve never had a single class even vaguely similar to that (across at least 8 departments). Having studied at W&M, UVa, LSE, etc and have found W&M professors to be the most teaching just to teach.

I sincerely doubt you ever attended.