I remember walking through Harvard Yard my Sophomore year after taking a test in one of my classes (Portuguese, I think). My head was down and I had tears streaming down my face. A friend came by and asked me if I was ok. I don’t remember what incoherent response I gave.
I do remember two things. First, there were people around me who cared enough to check in on me. Second, I wasn’t in a good place and I couldn’t hold it in. This wasn’t the first, nor the last time it happened.
I thought it was just me. I felt like I didn’t belong, like I was the odd man out. This feeling of sorrow, of inadequacy would just eat away at me sometimes, scratching at the surface until it showed itself through tears of rage or torment. There were weeks at a time when my moods would swing like a pendulum (albeit an irregular one). There were days where I’d spend hours in bed curled up in a ball, thinking I must have done something wrong to feel this way. I thought, “Everybody else looks like they have it all together, so it must be me.”
On top of all that, there was the baggage I felt around letting my family down. I was the first person in my family to go to college. My parents overcame so much more than what I was going through. If they could succeed under more dire conditions, I didn’t have an excuse. I created an unreasonable set of expectations for myself where taking a step back was never an option. My parents constantly told me that they just wanted me to be happy, but I’m the one who attached happiness to academic/career success.
Throw in the stigma attached to mental health which is so especially prevalent in Latino and minority households, and you had a recipe for disaster!
Fortunately, I had a strong support system of friends in place who were there to help. What’s just as significant is that these friends also pushed me to seek professional help. I was diagnosed with depression and was provided a space to freely talk about my thoughts and feelings. Counseling helped unearth so much that was hiding beneath the surface. I realized that:
- College was only the second time in my life that I was away from home for longer than a few days (the first was a summer program in HS).
- I didn’t know about or didn’t want to acknowledge the skill gaps I had around basic study habits.
- Life was COMPLETELY different from what I experienced at home. The food, the culture, the surroundings, the people (especially being around so many who were uber wealthy) – EVERYTHING was different.
Over time, I realized it wasn’t just me. I would come to learn that 40% of Harvard students reach out for mental health support any given year. This number doesn’t take into account the students who receive similar types of support from strong mentors, study groups, religious groups, and/or student organizations. While there were surely students who had everything together, it turns out they were a small percentage of student population.
Thinking about my experiences sometimes makes me feel anxious about my own students heading off to college. There is only so much we can explain and prepare them for before they experience college life themselves.
This begs the question, what is in our power that we can do for our students?
- Make sure students have strong support systems in place before they leave for college, and that they know how to set up new ones in place once they get to college. Established support systems would include family, friends, teachers, or other mentors they can reach out to for help. New support systems might include their college advisor, roommates, student organizations, and/or their Dean.
- Make sure students know its ok to get help and how to get help. Help them understand that there’s nothing wrong with managing their mental health. Nowadays, colleges put out a ton of information about the mental health services they have available for their students. Go through that information with your students and help them start feel comfortable about scheduling counseling appointments if things get too rough.
- Help students make plans for a lot of weird basic things. For students who are going out of state and can’t afford to come back for every break, what are they going to do for each of their holiday breaks? Their tuition and fees may cover the essentials, but how is the student going to get some extra money to be able to go out with friends every once in a while? Sometimes there’s even more anxiety about examples such as these than how to study for a test.
- Talk to students about failures they might experience. Don’t sugarcoat anything. Then, teach them how to respond and react to failure. Unfortunately, there’s no cookie cutter plan that works for everybody. Each student requires a plan depending on their circumstances. Are they close their family? Do they have a core group of friends? Are they religious? These questions and more would need to be answers to help students come up with their individualized comprehensive plan to help them cope with and rebound from failure.
There’s a lot riding on a student when they are a first-generation college student, and so they need to know that feelings of defeat and low self-worth are to be accepted. What’s important is that we set them up to pick themselves up and rebound from any hardships they might encounter. We can’t prevent them from experiencing failure or sorrow, but we can help them learn how to bounce back and move on.
