November 13th, 2009
This is the first in a series of pieces I hope to write about the nine month detour I'm about to take in my life. I thought I had it all, but I was steadily slipping before I even realized there was a problem, and I'm still not too sure exactly what that problem was, but I guess that's part of the point of this little venture. For the past two-something years I've been a student at MIT. You know, the place where the future gets made and all that jazz. The place is unique, insane, ridiculous, frustrating, infuriating, heavenly, hellish, enlightening, demented and brilliant depending on the time and situation. Going there has been enough of a roller coaster for a lifetime.

The actual classwork can be among the most punishing and grueling tasks that some of us who go there will ever have to perform. I've seen people break down in tears at 5 in the morning after being up all night and still having no clue how they're going to get their work done on time. That person has even been me from time to time. MIT strives at pushing people to their breaking points, and not that infrequently it pushes people over the edge. It was just revealed yesterday that a kid who lived in my dorm died alone in the woods last week. Most popular theory is suicide.

It's sad how unsurprised I was by the news, and even worse how little I felt over it or cared about it. I had never really known the guy, and people who remembered him said he was really quiet and shy. It's starting to hit me now though. Somebody died, somebody who lived in the building that takes up the entirety of the view outside of my window. He was an international student from Swahili that had never left his home before coming to America to go to school. I read the school paper today and it said that MIT had to contact the guy's parents through "diplomatic means" or some similar bullshit wording. I find it kind of ridiculous that you need to work through government channels to even tell two parents that their son who they essentially sent off into the great unknown is now dead and nobody really has any clue why.

I'm not going to bother looking up the guy's name because this isn't an isolated incident. Last year a grad student jumped off a building - nobody remembers his name. One year a guy died by self-affixiation when he hooked himself up to a large tank of nitrous oxide and never took off the mask - some people around campus remember his name, but not many. He went to whippet land and didn't bother to book a return trip. One year a girl locked herself in her room and set herself on fire - if anyone remembers her name, I don't know them. Last year a frat guy got too drunk and fell out of his third story window - mostly just his brothers remember his name. He was spared the label of suicidal because everybody thinks it was just a drunken accident. I'm not sure, but I think there was another kid who died out in the woods a few years back, but I know even less about that one.

These are just the stories I remember off the top of my head, the few that are still whispered about, but I only remember the details of the deaths. I have no names next to these stories in my memory. I know nothing of these people's lives, what they did or wanted to do, what inspired them or who they loved, what they did for others or what impact they left on the world. All I know of them are the stories and rumors of their last moments, and that's a crying shame.

There is one name a lot of people do remember, but for the same reason I remember those stories as well as what impact his death had on the entire MIT community. Scott Kruger was the freshman that partied too hard and died of alcohol poisoning at a frat party, causing all freshmen since to be required to live in on-campus dorms their first year. His death completely changed rush as MIT knew it. That's what it takes to get remembered there - have your death mess with people's ways of life. The rest of them are mostly nameless stories, but what even Scott has in common with them is that none of them are remembered for anything they did while alive. From the outside, people can't help but wonder how all of this happens. As I said though, it's not that surprising from the inside.

Students at MIT have developed quite the support structures, communities and cultures to combat that which can cause one to just lose it. Living groups and even single halls of dorms there are more tightly knit than almost any other group of 25-50 people that I've ever met. At MIT you really do work hard play hard, but it's usually because you don't have much of a choice. If you don't play hard the work can drive you literally insane. Sometimes you still go crazy anyways, but you might as well go down enjoying yourself.

People do what they can to take care of each other because they all understand how close someone can be to breaking at any given time, but you can usually only reach out to people you know and hang out with. That's why these living groups are so close, but it's also why shy, quiet kids who stay cooped up in their room like the guy who just died don't always get the help they need and everything just becomes too much.

I'm lucky enough to have a lot of great, close friends at MIT and they're definitely the reason I've made it there as long as I have. But sometimes all the support in the world can't help you. I made the same mistake tons of people make at that place and took on too many responsibilities and couldn't handle it. On top of a class for my major and three classes for another course that I was considering doubling in that totaled in about 60 pages worth of papers I would have to write over the semester, I was vice president of my dorm, a brother at my fraternity that I regularly visited, a hall chair for my specific hall, and general manager for the campus radio station, all while trying to have a very close relationship with the girl I think might be the love of my life and keeping up a rather rigorous party schedule Thursday night through Saturday night every week.

I kept telling myself I could handle it all with no problem and kept up the juggling act for a couple months with varying levels of success. I stuck to my usual practice of horrible procrastination and there were multiple occasions where it was 9 or 10 the night before a 5 or 7 page paper was due and I'd have maybe a paragraph done. I thought I would do what I usually do - wing it fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants style and miraculously finish right before it was due - and I did for a time. But I started slipping, I started needing extensions on papers and exams and then just barely made those deadlines. I took all the right steps to get help, even if only after I was influenced to by my worried girlfriend, including seeing mental health services and student support services and calling night line, the student-run anonymous support hot-line. I was even considering taking a semester off before things got really ugly.

They helped me in some ways, but it just never seemed to help combat whatever my problem was well enough. Stuff kept piling up, not only in classwork but in my other responsibilities as well, and it got to a point where I felt really unproductive because there was so much to do that I didn't even know where to start and just sat there and did nothing. There would be good weeks and bad weeks, but the bad weeks just kept getting worse and worse. It got to the point where a week ago today I was just sitting with my girlfriend in my room and for seemingly no reason whatsoever I just started to break down into tears and was horribly depressed. It was a truly frightening experience, because there I was crying uncontrollably and couldn't think of any particular reason why.

I started thinking horrible thoughts, about how the window was right there and I had rope that I could just tie to my loft and my neck and then jump and just end it all. I didn't even know why I wanted to commit suicide, I just had this urge to. It got to the point where even though she already wasn't going anywhere I asked my girlfriend not to leave me alone right then because I was afraid I might jump out the window. Like I said, support at MIT is fucking important. She stayed with me and walked me over to mental health, where I proceeded to explain my situation through bouts of sobbing.

At this point I realized that I needed to get out of MIT ASAP, and thankfully the psychiatrists I was talking to agreed. They thought if I tried to stay and finish my current semester I'd probably end up with pretty shitty grades and just be that much more stressed out, overwhelmed and generally fucked up. It was possibly the most insight I've seen out of anyone that calls themselves a doctor. Student support services agreed that a medical leave would probably do me good and that I should plan on returning to MIT next September and restart junior year fresh. I agreed that sounded like a pretty good idea.

So here I am, less than 48 hours before leaving this place for the next nine and a half months or so, writing my story because I didn't want to pack up my stuff anymore - it was getting too depressing to look at all the old things I was cleaning out of my room and realizing everything I'm about to leave behind for a while. I know it's for the best to get as far away from here as I can for some time, but I'm sure as hell gonna miss this place when I do. Then again, I don't know if I believe that hell is really that sure, but I digress.

When telling people that I'm leaving and why, I was surprised by the amount of people who had done similar things or had thought about leaving for a while because they just couldn't handle the stress of it all. I'm no isolated incident either, it seems. MIT can and does really mess with a lot of people's heads, and the suicide rate shows that there isn't always adequate support for people.

So I'm off to set my own things straight - figure out what I want to do with my life and generally get my shit together. I hope to learn a lot about myself and the world on this little adventure, or something similarly corny, and I really do have high hopes for it. I'll continue to write these as an account of this detour in my life.

This is dedicated to those forgotten names, and is for those who are having a tough time at MIT and are wondering how the fuck they're going to keep it together - I hope to show them that there are ways to help yourself and they shouldn't just end up another whispered story.



Oh yeah, I looked him up - his name was Kabelo, and there are people who will miss him.