In July of 2015, the New York Times published a piece focusing on alumna Kathryn DeWitt’s experiences with depression and the pressure of perfection in college environments. Features editor Virginia Hsiao recently interviewed DeWitt to follow up on her current situation and elicit advice from DeWitt for rising college freshmen.
Can you introduce your situation?
I started with the Class of 2017 and that was in the fall of 2013. I became depressed and anxious towards the end of that first semester, so towards the end of Thanksgiving break, everything started spiraling out of control for me. I got back to school after that winter break, and I ended up hospitalized for suicidal ideation. From there I took a leave and took a year off.
What was your year off like?
I was really fortunate because I got to take some time to do some unconventional things. For the first semester, I was sort of a nanny in New York City, and I got to be in a family environment again while getting treatment. Then over the summer, I came back to San Mateo and worked at a summer camp that I had during my past summers and took a writing class. What was really interesting was that fall, when I was off of school, I actually took an internship at Active Minds International, a non-profit in Washington D.C.
How did your time off affect you?
That internship really changed the way I talked about mental health and the way I thought about my leave, because for me, my leave first felt like a weakness or a failure, like I wanted to be able to finish Penn like everyone else or finish college in the four years, but somehow, I couldn’t “do it.” When I found an internship that took what had happened and the way I was feeling, I found a way to make it positive and create good out of the terrible things that I had had, and it was really where I found myself blossoming and growing as a person. For me, while at Active Minds,, I helped them coordinate their conference, lots of little administrative tasks, and also assisted with content design of blog posts, mental health news round up, and some other small tasks that have continued to inform what I want to do not only in college but also post graduation.
What was your perspective like before?
I think that a lot of students at Aragon know that there are people that self harm — there are people who have depression at Aragon, but I didn’t think it could be me, and I never thought it could be something that could so radically change your life. When I started out at Penn, I thought just as we are all told, “the best and the brightest,” but for me, there are a lot of factors going into what happened including the environment: having winter, my biological genetic tendencies towards depression and anxiety, as well as some other conditions that really remained unresolved, that culminated in a mental health crisis.
What would you say you learned from this?
I guess, first of all, I want to make it clear that it’s not just about perfection, it’s not just about grades, it’s not just about parental pressure. There’s so many different complicating factors that go into any person’s mental health, and each person’s mental health is unique and their own. What may be for example cause somebody depression might not cause another person depression depending on how they think or how their genetics are.
What do you think could have helped you when you first started out at Penn?
I think that the biggest thing that I could have used was more understanding of stigma reduction. For me, and I don’t know if it’s part of my own pride, my lack of desire to get help, and partially my family not talking about mental health, but I didn’t know that there were resources for me to access when things were not great. One of the main things we do at Active Minds is try to say, “Look, one, it’s okay to not be okay. Two, let’s change the conversation about mental health. Let’s get early intervention happening, and happening well. Three, reach out if you are struggling and don’t hold it in.” Basically I defied all three of those laws and ended up in a very bad crisis.
How would you describe what happened to you?
I guess one of my favorite metaphors for depression is the black dog. It’s a video that the WHO released about how there’s this large animal that follows you around. No one else can see it, and it’s hidden on you. It makes you unable to do the things you would normally would do, or makes you think differently. For me, my mindset was very much warped by this depression. It had become so much so that I really didn’t see a way out. I didn’t see the next semester happening, and I didn’t see a future, so that formation changed from weeks, days, and basically months of anxiety on high alert, depression on high alert, and a lot of other factors that culminated in the created this “there’s no way out except for suicide.”
How did being at Penn affect you?
For me, I think there were a lot of parts that worsened my depression and anxiety because of the culture at Penn, but it’s part of the east coast culture that I wasn’t as used to as well. Some of the examples I gave were when you have a test, you start complaining to your friends, “I have a test, and a paper, and a track meet,” but then your friend comes back, and is like, “I have two tests, another paper, and I have a piano recital, and a track meet.”
That kind of competitive nature of how busy you are and how well you are handling your stress is part of what goes on at Penn. There’s also the sleep wars, where you kind of brag about how little sleep you got, which is ridiculous because sleep is good for you. Sleep helps you. Since taking my leave of absence, I have seen Penn’s culture change a lot, towards the better. It is by no means perfect, but there is more discussion about what it means to be mentally well and what it means to take care of yourself.
How do you think you have changed after the incident?
I think for me the biggest and most important part is knowing that I have found self validation in other means, not through the culture and not through competing with others but through the friends and the relationships I have made, for doing as well as I can within the context of the situation and knowing that when I do my best, my best might not be as good as somebody else’s. It’s a lot about understanding that we are all different people, and we all have different skills and talents that will work together to make us a more beautiful society.
For many people, uncertainty adds a significant amount of stress. How do you currently deal with uncertainty?
I think that for me, embracing uncertainty has been more freeing than worrying about it. There are a lot of things that can happen when you don’t know what is going to happen. Some opportunities come your ways that would not happen otherwise. The other part about uncertainty is most of the things that we are uncertain about — grades, whether you are rushing, what activities you join — in the end, it is one decision, one choice — it is not the be all end all of anything. You life goes on. There is uncertainty, and there will be uncertainty, but what matters at the end of the day is the people you have around you, the work you are doing, and how well you can perform for your context.
What is something Aragon seniors should be aware of as they proceed to college?
I think a thing I want to say to Aragon seniors is to check in on each other. One of the things that was hard for me was I went to Penn where I didn’t have anyone else from Aragon. If you notice that one of your friends has changed diametrically, like they used to be really quiet and reserved and now you are wondering whether they are abusing alcohol, or they have this strange relationship where it doesn’t seem like the power dynamics are fair, to kind of check in with them and say, “Hey, I’m a little concerned about you.”
Are there any support systems rising college freshmen can utilize as they move forward?
There’s this website called transition year. For new college students to have a preexisting anxiety disorder or depression, they can actually go through that and say, “Hey, what are somethings that might be more disconcerting?”
What should rising college freshmen know about the transition to college?
I think the other thing about the transition is recognizing that it’s not going to be easy or perfect — like everyone has this idealized version of what your first week or orientation during freshmen year is supposed to be like, but that’s not how it’s going to happen. There’s going to be messiness, there’s going to be awkwardness, you might not get along with your roommate. You might realize that you are the only one left in the hall and everyone else went out to dinner, but at the end of the day, it’s your college experience, and you’ll make out of it what you make of it.
How should rising college freshmen view social expectations?
The other thing I would recommend for people starting their first year is to know that not all friendships happen in your first year. There is a lot of pressure to say, “Oh my freshmen hall and I are best friends,” when you come back from winter break, but it’s also okay to say that you haven’t found your people yet — especially if you are going to a large school like a UC.
How do you currently view expectations?
For me, coming in having those high expectations was important, but the main thing that was detrimental was that the expectations created my self worth. My sense of self and my value was based on whether or not I succeeded in X, Y, or Z, and that’s a very fragile sense of identity. Once you’ve had that experience of failure, you start to find how to redefine yourself — I am a student, I am a musician, I am an athlete, I am a friend, I am a volunteer, I am a leader, but what I am is not determined based on how many people show up at my club, not determined based on my GPA, my SAT scores, not determined based on how many AP tests I took — it’s determined by how well I can do and knowing who I am and knowing what I can perform.
How have you moved forward in your recovery?
I think that a lot of it for me is telling the story and saying, “Okay sure I have struggles, here’s what I went through and that doesn’t define me anymore.” As I shared my story each day and as I shared my story with the New York Times, people came to me and were like, “Oh you’re that suicidal girl at Penn,” but that’s not how I define myself, and it’s really about something that really happened in my life. This is something that has made me a kinder person, someone who can listen, someone who has a deep understanding of the system surrounding mental health. How do I take that knowledge and make it so that no one else goes through what I went through?
How do you currently view expectations?
Parents, society, and myself all came together to form my expectations. I think the biggest thing is to recognize that those expectations exist, but question the validity of that statement.
So what if I don’t get a 4.0? So what if I don’t pass my AP exam? So what if I don’t get into my dream school? Once you get into that mindset of those so what questions, you can start to move past that expectation and create smart goals. For instance, you could think, “I would like to score X on the SAT, but I understand if I don’t. I want to pass my AP, but I understand if I don’t, but I’m still going to work really hard to do it.”
Expectations come from a good place. They come from us wanting to succeed and do well, they come from the pressure to do well, so we don’t want to lose that motivation, but we want to lose that confinement that comes with, “I didn’t meet my expectations.”
What are you currently doing?
So, I’m currently the co-president of Active Minds, and one of our big initiatives is looking at leave of absences and how students are hesitating to take them because of the stigma attached to them or the fact they are worried that their financial aid will be impacted or their academic record will be impacted and that they cannot get jobs. I’m hoping to use our connections with the administration to continue to promote wellness on campus through that initiative and others.
Any final words for rising college freshmen?
Get excited. It is an exciting time. You’ve been waiting for this for the past four years and you are going to be around some brilliant minds, incredible people, and have wonderful opportunities at your fingertips — but also recognize that there could be some things that could be hard. Your college experience will have its ups and its downs. Celebrate the ups and recognize how to get help when you are in one of those downs.
