Depression at college

Parent Cafe
1

<p>So I’m about 2 months into my freshman engineering education at Cornell, and I’m not really enjoying anything. For starters, my roommate is Korean, so he wants nothing to do with me. He’d rather spend time with all of his Korean friends and speak Korean with them. I had one good friend for a few weeks, but her boyfriend back home didn’t exactly appreciate our friendship. Unfortunately, we even liked each other, and she told me that she would date me if she were single. That depresses me. We don’t see or speak to each other anymore.</p>

<p>I’m involved in some activities. Most of the kids I’ve met in them don’t particularly interest me. I’ve gone out to eat with kids from my hall, from my activities, and from class, and I usually drop out of the conversations because the talk gets boring. People seem really shallow at times. I at least pretend to laugh in “funny” conversations just to fit in.</p>

<p>I hate the partying scene because I don’t drink nor do I find parties fun. Most of the kids I’ve met seem to love these things and pepper all of their conversations with references to their drunk escapades. I hate it. I can’t find anyone here who’s like me. I feel like I’m too unique.</p>

<p>I’ve mostly given up on trying to talk to other people. I used to ask other people if I could go to dinner with them, like my next-door neighbors, but now I just eat alone. No one wants to invite me to eat, anyway.</p>

<p>The only person I ever talk to is my therapist, and she seems overly concerned about my negative views of life. I’ve been on antidepressants for a few weeks now, but they’re not helping yet. Really, nothing is helping. It’s not even Cornell’s fault; sure, I hate the workload, but I hate “living” more. I’m not going to blame a university for that.</p>

<p>Probably the worst part of all of this is that my mother has to hear about all of it. She’s overly worried about me, especially since she’s single and both my brother and me are away at college. She literally has no where to turn. I tell her exactly how I feel, and she’s usually speechless at the kinds of things that I say. </p>

<p>Many days, I think of what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I don’t know if I’m going to make it through Cornell. I consider dropping out of college. I also consider taking a week-long medical leave to the hospital or a semester-long leave. I’m very hopeless about the future. I’m full of so much despair. My high school friends are all very concerned about me, but their support doesn’t give me a reason to continue living.</p>

<p>I’m sorry about all the melancholy in this post…</p>

<p>Does anyone have any advice for me? Is college really supposed to be this bad? I had no idea college was going to be the worst time of my life.</p>

2

<p>My heart goes out to you. Hang in there. Keep working with your therapist. Do you exercize? If not, start inmmediately. Start slowly doing just as much as is comfortable and then increasing it as you get in better shape. Exercize WILL improve your mood and the way you feel. Jogging is the best way to go - it can become a good addiction even. And it absolutely positively is fun to do alone or with friends. As you get more into it, join a running club or enter races. Look around you at Cornell for other clubs to join, activites to enter into; it’s a big school and there are plenty of other kids like you there. Consider asking for a chnage of roommate; you have justification; perhaps your therapist can support your request. Make an effort not to come across as someone who has a black cloud over their head or is too needy; people don’t react well to either. You obviously had friends in high school. What were they like and what did you do together? Look for similar kinds of people at Cornell and similar things to do. And try to be less judgmental of the new people yopu are meeting; people may be reacting negativley to the way you react to them. Good luck to you. I will think positive thoughts for you. Keep us posted on how it’s going.
College is NOT this bad. Actually high school generally has a worse reputation for causing unhappiness. You will come to enjoy your college experience. It’s just tough some times to start making friends in a wholly new environment.</p>

3

<p>Right now is probably the toughest time for freshmen. The newness has worn off, the workload is heavier, the weather is turning… You are not alone.</p>

<p>So let’s see what you can do. Ask for a change of roommate if possible. But also consider joining groups and clubs for activities. Friends of my S have banded together to produce some skits, for example; others join a capella groups, or organizations like Campus Dems or Reps, or groups focused on community service, etc… These become their niche, and they make plans to eat together.
Form study groups with classmates. They will help you with the homework and may also foster friendships.
As for the anti-depressant, it takes time for it to work, so don’t give up yet. </p>

<p>Good luck and come back and let us know how things work out for you.</p>

4

<p>I feel bad for you. This sounds like a classic case of depression. You are not alone! Please know that this will pass but you need to take steps now to treat it. Things are not hopeless and you will smile and enjoy life again. You have taken the first step by seeing a therapist. You are on medication - it may take six weeks of taking it to see a change or you may need to try another medication. Let your therapist know exactly how you are feeling. </p>

<p>If you need to take a week/month/semester off then do it. There is nothing more important than your mental and physical health. Continue to be honest with your mom and don’t shield her from how you’re feeling. If you ever feel like things are truly hopeless then you should go directly to the ER, mental health facility, etc. </p>

<p>Big hugs to you. I’m glad you posted here. Let us know how you’re doing.</p>

5

<p>Good for you for taking the steps you have already taken to get help by talking with a therapist. It’s a very good sign that you’ve reached out for help and if you continue to work as part of a team with your therapist, there are great prospects that things will improve.</p>

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<p>You are a thoughtful and empathetic son to realize the toll this is taking on your mom, but it’s good that you are able to communicate with her and reach out to her for support.</p>

<p>Since, as you say, “she literally has nowhere to turn” for support for herself, you might want to encourage her to a see a counselor herself. A counselor could provide some much-needed support for your mother and give her some suggestions about how best to support you and maintain her own emotional health at the same time. </p>

<p>If your mom expresses concern about the cost of counseling for herself, there are community mental health programs with sliding fees. Your therapist at college could probably give you helpful pointers to locate a good program near home for your mom.</p>

<p>I also agree with the good advice above–there is lots of scientific evidence that exercise helps a lot. Healthy eating and adequate sleep can help too. It may be hard, but reaching out to find some kindred spirit friends could help enormously. Don’t give up looking–perhaps there’s someone in one of your classes who would be thrilled to have you as a study partner. Community service activities can be rewarding and you might meet some kindred spirits there too.</p>

6

<p>Try to make more friends. Just go out and talk to people. Show interest in their lives. Ask them about their lives…etc. Trust me, people will take more interest in you and be your friend if you are more open and confident. And find something you like to do…art, music, boxing, whatever. Stick to it and you should be making good progress. You are not the only one who is depressed at Cornell or any other school for that matter. You can take steps to get rid of this temporary condition…</p>

7

<p>I applaud you for getting to a therapist and for being honest with the people who love you the most and who most need you to get through this rough patch and on to a fresh chapter in your life. Depression does mess up thinking and your actual ideas and perspective sometimes and leads to catastrophic thoughts instead of partializing problems and keeping things in perspective. But you don’t have to stay in this state of mind…you will work it through and much faster with meds and talk therapy. Even with no treatment, you would probably eventually get through it so view your down state of mind as a transition, not a permanent state.</p>

<p>Engineering school and depressive spells can be a really bad mix. Not an environment very tolerant of slumps or extravagent socializing. And it is hard to be sharing living space with someone from another culture and another original language who prefers another group. Cornell does have a drinking friendly scene that may get quite tiresome for you but some of the freshmen who look like vacuous morons while drinking now are going to cut it out and be much more interesting and worthwhile people in a year or so when the novelty wears off. </p>

<p>I am sure you would prefer to be moving more in circles of people your own age for getting your needs for talking honestly, sharing feelings and being Real met rather than relying on your Mom and your therapist, but think of this as a transition time in your life where people who are 18 and 19 are simply not mature enough yet to sort things out with you in this intense way. Everyone your age is floundering a bit and dealing with a big case of Identity Diffusion. Recognize that others are also in flux and not at home at Cornell yet.
Given a little time and a year or two some people who seem shallow at the moment will show you more depth of field. </p>

<p>Did you have circles of friends that worked for you in high school? Or is sticking it out in a cold new world a new experience for you? (I changed schools in 9 states before getting out of HS so I do know what it is to go to school for weeks without being “included” in anything, and to watch other groups go off together to eat, study or party without including me. My winning advice (!) is sort of counterintuitive plus it is really hard to pull off when you are also depressed. Pretend you have had a lobotomy and totally forgive every single person who seems oblivious to you five times before giving up…and always show interest in the other person, have amnesia about “being left out” and remain open to others rather then drawing conclusions. </p>

<p>You haven’t been there that long and friendship circles shift considerably from freshman to sophomore years. Just get in the game in say two arenas, keep your head down and try to have high opinions of others. Having a High Opinion of Others is actually a key mental health secret weapon.
If you really are bored to tears with students who focus on drinking, keep your grades up and your chin up and consider transferring to a campus where the drinking scene has a small profile. You don’t have to like the whole emphasis on getting wasted and there are plenty of schools where alcohol and drugs are only for the minority. You don’t have to go to Brigham Young or Bob Jones to find a student body that is more health oriented and less keen on drinking.
You are bright, and “happiness” is an elusive butterfly (eek, memories of a terrible Single record circa about 1966…) for all of us, lower your expectations and savor things like Great Hours, some points of contentment, privacy and independence, contemplation, fresh air and a work out, good food, good lectures, and absorb what is going on around you in a watchful way. It is not at all unheard of for a social life to emerge a year or so from now in a hugely satisfying way and lonely skid spells in college are pretty much a norm. My favorite guy friend from undergrad days is a fantastic guy who actually didn’t emerge from the Labs until he was a junior and decided to consider putting energy into friendships in a late but very worthwhile effort. Don’t underestimate your peers I guess is my point.<br>
Maybe a school where it gets pitch dark at 5pm is also not best for you…keep up your grades and allow yourself to consider a transfer as an option. Stay in treatment…meds and talk hours is my advice and you will notice that you are feeling more perspective and relief. Take very good care of yourself…There are people your age in your future who are going to mean the world to you…waiting to meet them can be very worrisome and lonely, but your future has some great new personalities and friendships in it that will brighten your world and you are going to become essential to a circle of friends as well. Consider a more intimate smaller college if Cornell just gets you down. You have four years to simply study and absorb and a lifetime of real world employment after that.</p>

8

<p>You have received some good advice above, and I’d just like to reiterate that you aren’t alone in taking a considerable time to adjust to college and being away from the familiarity and comforts of home, family and friends. It is more common than you may think because many people don’t show their internal worries. When people say that college was the best years of their lives, they are usually talking in retrospect, and about 4 years worth of memories. They normally aren’t talking about first semester when all kids are faced with the stresses of having every aspect of life as new and unknown. </p>

<p>You are doing the best thing, by going to health services and seeing a therapist. The professionals at colleges are familiar with your issues. You need to give them and your medication some more time to make an impact. </p>

<p>One thing I’d like to add is that from your post, it seems that you are spending a lot of energy worrying about your long range future (that is, what you will do with your life, should you stay in college, etc.). I think it would be more helpful to you right now to focus on very short term goals, for example, identifying some social activity in which you can participate during the upcoming weekend or finding a lounge where kids are watching a tv show you enjoy and joining them. Not everyone bonds with the kids on their dorm floor and so it is necessary to venture further away to find like-minded friends. Cornell is a large school, and there are many kids who aren’t into the partying scene. It just takes longer to find them, and remember, the kids who aren’t into partying are looking for you as well. You will meet up.</p>

<p>Please keep us posted.</p>

9

<p>Unfortunately, this is how college life is. </p>

<p>As students are living away from their parents, they abuse the “freedom” that they have. Since they don’t have a parent around, a high percentage of college students consume high amounts of alcohol each week. They also try to pressure other students to have sex with them because they think it’s cool. They all have bad values.</p>

10

<p>Not all students have bad values, and I’m sure that in a school the size of Cornell you’ll meet many interesting non-drinking types. The issue here seems more your overall depression rather than the quality of people at Cornell. Let the anti-depressants do their job (it may take a while) continue therapy, and try to get out there: talk to people in classes, clubs, go to some sporting events. You WILL find a group of peers you respect and like. Real friendships aren’t made overnight.</p>

11

<p>Step, All great advice above. I wanted to tell you about someone whose story is very much like yours. My neice was an engineering student at Cornell. After her first semester, during the Xmas break, she came to my house with a pros and cons list of why she should or shouldn’t return to Cornell. She was miserable, had made no friends, was overloaded with work, had done more poorly in her classes than she had anticipated, and generally felt like she would never be happy there. After much soul searching, she decided to stick it out through the end of the year, but start investigating transfer options during the spring. Sometime during that semester, she started to feel better about her classes, she met some like minded people (she, like you, was not a partier and found many people shallow), and her overall depression began to lift. She decided to stay on in Ithica and has recently graduated this past spring. </p>

<p>My heart goes out to you as it did to her back in those days. It is hard to be in a new place, away from family and friends. Keep trying to get out, trust me, there are people that you can relate with and that will become your friends. I’m sure there are kids who feel as you do, it just may take time to find them. Good luck to you and know that you are not alone.</p>

12

<p>You’ve gotten some great advice, especially from Faline. I would like to add that you can combine several of these suggestions (meeting new people, getting outdoors, exercising) by volunteering at Cornell Plantations. I think most of the volunteers are mature adults; as a younger person, you’d be most welcome and the friends you make there would have quite a different perspective on life.</p>

13

<p>And please keep us posted periodically on how you are doing. It is clear that many of us are interested in you and how this works out for you - as I am confident that it will.</p>

14

<p>Thanks for all of the advice, everyone. I especially liked ag54’s story, and I’m sure thousands more experience this when they begin college.</p>

<p>However, my situation hasn’t improved. It’s affecting my schoolwork too. I do my homework at the last possible minute. I’m often up until 5 in the morning, and I finish homework assignments and chemistry labs an hour before class. I study for about 2-3 hours before my tests. Surprisingly, I’ve done well on them so far, but I know my grades could definitely be better.</p>

<p>I’m addicted to going on AIM and talking to my high school friends. I’m always depressed when I talk to them, but it’s not like talking to them ever improves my mood. I realize that, in the end, I just want their pity. That’s no good.</p>

<p>I’ve come to the point where I just talk to people for homework help. I continue to eat alone. I don’t care anymore. I’m sick of meeting people and then finding out that they drink themselves silly or sleep with random people on the weekends. On the flipside, I’m sick of meeting people who are obsessed with their academics and grades. I hate that the laidback people drink and do drugs, and the sophisticated people dream about their grades. Where do I fit in? </p>

<p>I’ve been trying to think of a good hobby for myself lately, but I’ve continually come up empty. I don’t know what the hell to do with my life. I’m jealous of all of these kids here who seem to have everything figured out. They’re so involved in different things, and they seem so happy. On top of that, they look forward to “getting smashed” every weekend. How can anyone respect that?</p>

<p>I must also tell everyone that I was depressed throughout most of high school, and I’ve been in counseling before. I gave up on it though because I hated my counselor. I continued to be depressed afterwards, however. There were times that I implied how awful I felt to my mother, but she never took me seriously. I’m disappointed that it took me until college to realize how bad it was. My summer was a living hell, but I assumed that once I arrived at college, I’d feel better. Boy, was I wrong. My life is such a mess.</p>

15

<p>Step:</p>

<p>Believe me, there are students who are neither party-hearty nor grade grubbers. However, your depression is probably coloring your whole outlook and is making it difficult for you to reach out to more kindred spirits. If you suffered from depression throughout high school, you probably have clinical depression and should consult a physician, not just use talk therapy.
Clinical depression is a medical condition. Quite often, it gets worse when you get to college. It may have to do with age, or it may be worsened by the huge transition from home and high school to college. But whatever the cause, you are not alone; it is common among young people your age. Run, don’t walk to the Health Services and ask to see a mental health specialist. Medication can really help. It will take some time for the correct dosage to be found and for its effects to be felt, but you will feel very differently toward college.</p>

16

<p>I feel really badly for you. Has your therapist spoken with you about any medications? It might help you short term while you are feeling depressed. My daughter had depression in high school and in college. She worked it through with therapy and some medication. As a parent, I say don’t give up! You have made it to a great school and you will begin to enjoy it. Can you get involved with professors? Stay conncected with your classes - search for a niche. </p>

<p>And talk with family, friends with whom you are comfortable. Talking really helps! Hang in there. You have too much to awful to all of us in your future!</p>

17

<p>Sorry, I meant too mush to OFFER - and I mean that!</p>

18

<ol>
<li><p>It can take weeks for your medication to kick in. Typically, one is started on a low dose that is gradually increased until one feels the effects. Talk to your therapist and to the doctor who prescribed the medication. Who is prescribing your mediction? If it’s a general practitioner, I strongly suggest that you see a psychiatrist, who may be willing to prescribe your medication while you continue seeing your therapist to get counseling. I suggest a psychiatrist for your meds because that person would be better trained in medically addressing problems like depression.</p></li>
<li><p>Your therapist probably is concerned about your negativity because that’s a classic sign of depression. Things look bleak now because apparently you’re clinically depressed, which isn’t just a state of mind, but also is a medical problem. As your depression lifts, you’ll see more positives about your situation and also will be able to relate to people in more optimistic ways, which will broaden your friendships. If the college simply isn’t a good fit for you, you’ll be able to thoughtfully figure out transfer options.</p></li>
</ol>

19

<p>I’m sorry to hear you are having such a rought time at Cornell. I think the best way to overcome this is to find others that you can connect with and enjoy time with. If I might suggest, the Cornell Japanese Animation Society is always welcoming new members, you could come on buy and see if you can’t make some friends among us. Anime can be a great way to escape for a while and meet a lot of fun people. We meet saturdays at 8:00 in Goldwin Smith Lewis Auditorium.</p>

20

<p>Northstarmom is correct-- antidepressants can take weeks to kick in, and it can take even longer to find the right dosage, or you might need to switch to a different drug. Unfortunately it takes a lot of time. </p>

<p>The other tough thing about your situation is that you probably feel like withdrawing from the arduous task of finding friends and activities, but withdrawing is the last thing you should do. It’s a really viscious cycle-- you’re depressed so you withdraw so you get more depressed, and even less able to get yourself out of the cycle. </p>

<p>I know-- I’ve been there. It’s REALLY hard. I’m sure your therapist has told you this, but if you ever feel like harming yourself, please get help immediately.</p>