[Content note: suicide, mental illness] A few weeks ago Northwestern lost yet another student to suicide. There’s been pressure building all year for improved mental health services on campus, and I think that pressure will soon culminate in real, helpful changes on campus. At the same time, some have been saying that what we need …
Tag Archive: college
Jan 01 2013
Six Months
Every New Year’s Eve, I write a post about the year that’s about to end. When I was younger, I mostly used these posts to talk about significant things that had happened to me (getting a boyfriend, losing a boyfriend, getting into this or that program or college, and so on), explain what I’d learned …
Dec 25 2012
How It Feels To Shed Your Skin
Being a young and mobile person is a bit like having a never-ending case of whiplash. I don’t have a single identity or home or social circle; I have many, and I’m constantly leaving one for another and feeling like the skin that has been grafted onto my preexisting skin is being ripped off and …
Dec 10 2012
“Home”
This week I learned that depression and writer’s block together is a scary thing, as writing is my primary way of alleviating depression. Then I realized that the reason I couldn’t write was because I was refusing to write the piece that was trying to come out. When I finally let myself “feel the feels,” …
Nov 30 2012
HoboJacket’s Casual Classism: Ethical Humor and Objectifying the Homeless
Elite college students being snobby and idiotic isn’t really newsworthy, but a group of MIT students went above and beyond the standard this past week. The students thought it’d be funny to give local homeless people jackets from Caltech, MIT’s rival, in order to “show the true value of a Caltech degree.” And then, to …
Nov 27 2012
Dear Northwestern Administration: Wake Up
I have a letter to the editor of the Daily Northwestern today. If I seem kind of angry, that’s because I am. Dear Editor, Today I learned that Alyssa Weaver, the Weinberg junior who passed away last week, took her own life. I didn’t know Alyssa. I could’ve, though, because she was going to move into …
Nov 19 2012
Why Northwestern Needs an Orientation Program on Mental Health
A little over three years ago, I arrived at Northwestern as a freshman completely unprepared for what was about to happen.
I don’t mean the difficult academics, the new social structure, or the challenges of living away from my parents, although those certainly had a learning curve.
What I mean is the intense stress I suddenly had to deal with, the complete lack of a support system, and the shame and stigma of admitting “weakness” or “failure.”
Oct 23 2012
[storytime] How I Quit the Senior Thesis
Ever since I was little, I held a belief shared by many gifted kids–gifted kids who grow into overachieving teenagers and then sleepless college students and then budding doctors, lawyers, engineers, researchers, businesspeople, or just those legions of people who wear tailored suits and work in tall office buildings in lower Manhattan and do stuff …
Oct 19 2012
Affirmative Action Rant
A few days ago, the Daily Northwestern published a column called “Affirmative Action Dangerously Shortsighted.” It was predictably awful and spawned 269 (mostly dissenting) comments as of now. Some excerpts: I oppose the use of affirmative action in college admissions, the workplace and essentially any other setting. I am pleased that Fisher had the courage to revive …
Oct 04 2012
What We Talk About When We Talk About College
It’s been rather quiet around here lately. I’ve just started my senior year, and with that came a lot of reflection–what I want this last year to mean, how I can improve on the years that came before it, and, perhaps most importantly, why it is that my time at Northwestern has been so fucking …
About the Author
Brute Reason Tumblr
- "I have a family. I have friends. I have neighbors. I have loved ones. But that’s not why I deserve..."“I have a family. I have friends. I have neighbors. I have loved ones. But that’s not why I deserve to be treated as a human being. That’s not why you should reduce the stigma around mental illnesses, or increase mental health access, or change societal attitudes. That’s not why people with mental illnesses deserve help. Not to mention the fact that some peo […]
- Tell Kickstarter Not To Fund This Gross Book About How To Get Laid By Assaulting WomenTell Kickstarter Not To Fund This Gross Book About How To Get Laid By Assaulting Women: [Content note: sexual assault] There’s a project that’s just gotten funded through Kickstarter. It’s a book called Above the Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome With Women and it’s being written by a Redditor and pickup artist named Ken Hoinsky. Predictably, the book promise […]
- "There are some pretty grim consequences to the trope of highlighting ”friends and family” of the..."“There are some pretty grim consequences to the trope of highlighting ”friends and family” of the mentally ill at the expense of actual people with mental illness. I mean, aside from otherization and erasure (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, like those aren’t grim consequences in and of themselves, oh, I do make myself laugh). Ahem. First, it adds to an already-potent […]
- "I don’t think that friends and family members of people with mental illnesses don’t struggle, or..."“I don’t think that friends and family members of people with mental illnesses don’t struggle, or that their struggle isn’t important. I don’t think that friends and family members of people with mental illnesses don’t do great things to help, or that those things aren’t important to talk about. What I object to is centering their experience and their work a […]
- "Note the construction of the sentence: “We all know somebody – a family member, a friend, a neighbor..."“Note the construction of the sentence: “We all know somebody – a family member, a friend, a neighbor – who has struggled with mental illness.” The person with mental illness here is always someone else. They are always removed from ourselves. They are the people we help, the people we are sad for, the people we want to save. The people who are sick, the peo […]
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Two things to keep in mind:
1. I am bad at answering lengthy emails. Sorry!
2. I may ask you for permission to blog about our correspondence. However, if you are harassing/abusive/trollish, then I no longer have to ask you for permission. Proceed with caution!
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