Saw this article on suicides at Cornell. Cornell, along with MIT, is famous for suicides. I remember reading a while back that many of these suicides were committed by Asian dudes. It didn’t surprise me, given the high gorges, the cutthroat competitive culture, the almost negligible social network, and, of course, the social trials and tribulations of the Asian male. Anyway, three students (non-Asian, it seems) recently killed themselves, thereby re-igniting the discussions on suicide prevention at Cornell. After the Times article came out, Cornell announced that there were actually six suicides this year.
High pressure and high bridges AND being stuck in cold, obnoxious Ithaca–it’s a formula for a high suicide rate. They already warn incoming students to seek help if depression comes. Now they’re once again talking about safety nets, student support, etc.
All this support is nice, but if they really want to bring down the suicide rate, they should do the obvious: CUT DOWN THE WORKLOAD. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton people don’t have nearly the workload that Cornell people have–and their degrees are worth more. MIT has a similar workload, but their degrees are also worth more. The workload at Cornell is ridiculous. Real life doesn’t look like that. Where in real life do you get more work than you’ll ever possibly be able to complete, get 20% on a test with a 15% mean, and then get a certification? Where in the real world can you be right 20% of the time and call yourself a success? Sure, Cornell might say, they want to maintain their reputation for having the toughest workload in the world. But what’s the point? It helps no one. It’s not as if Cornell people are learning more than, say, Princeton people or Yale people.
Another interesting article on suicide was on CNN, where they describe how parents of suicide victims cope:
Parents whose children have taken their own lives say regardless of how much time goes by, they still feel guilty for continuing to live, or for being happy when their loved one is gone. The feeling of “What could I have done?” perpetuates this guilt, Kasselhut said.
This was an interesting perspective. Most people see suicide as an individual act. It never is. Eddie Van Halen called Kurt Cobain an “asshole” for killing himself after the following he built. This was a good quote by Margaret Pelleriti:
What I try to get across to adolescents or anyone is: It’s a permanent solution to something temporary. Whatever you’re going through, it’s just something temporary. This too is going to pass, but at that time they don’t see that.
Related posts:
But here is an...
I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
What was your experience at Cornell like?
It sounds like the undergraduate experience is not exactly fun there.
It’s isolated in the middle of nowhere with a ridiculously hard academic regimen. Oh yeah, add in the cold weather to boot.
You should have went to Brown.
It is a very fun experience, especially for undergraduate humanities majors. Interesting students with a lively campus culture in the arts, activism, and minority students in general. The curriculum also is not that hard and you have significant leeway to design your own course of study. And it’s close to Boston and to a lesser degree New York.
Oh man, this hits really close to home. I went through bouts of depression in college, including suicidality. Looking back, I now know that I was was way overloaded academically. It hurt all the more because it seemed like everyone else was fine with the workload, so I kept silent and ended up going nuts! There is just no way I would let my kids think that it’s normal to be so stretched to the breaking point like that.
Very good point about how suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. College fosters such tunnel vision, some schools worse than others. I don’t really know how this can be ameliorated, though: the kids that slip through the cracks are the hardest to help.
Thanks, Julie, for your comments. I agree with you. You’re totally right about the tunnel vision–when you’re there, it seems like that’s the whole world.
I had a long talk with someone last night about the whole weed-out system. They say that you can always drop out and go to another college. But is that realistic? Of course, people are going to fight tooth and nail not to drop out because, as you said, there’s tunnel vision. There’s pride. In the end, though, is it really worth it to spend four years barely trying to hang on? I think you learn a lot less when you’re just trying to survive.
I too would like to impart a different lesson to my kids.
Larry,
Cornell undergrad was hard. I actually hadn’t thought about it until this article came out. It was absolutely brutal. You get tossed into these huge classes, the prelims come barely two weeks after that, and then you sink or swim.
There were positives too. Lots of diversity, good scenery, huge libraries, good people. But overall, it was way too much of a pressure cooker. Reflecting on those years, I don’t see how that pressure helps anyone. I still give money to them, but I wish they’d give their students a bit more breathing room.
Brown sounds like an ideal place. I don’t know if I had the GPA to get into Brown, but if I had to do it over again, I’d probably go for something like that. Freedom of mind is important when studying humanities.
I went to the University of Chicago, which also has an unfortunate reputation for being a “suicidal” school. The same ingredients exist — cold dark winters and very high academic expectations.
However, while I don’t think the schools are completely blameless, I’m hesitant to point all my fingers at them. Do we really think that “non-suicidal” schools somehow have better suicide prevention strategies and techniques? Do they have weekly counseling sessions in the dorms? My guess is no. If anything, schools that are more well-known for having more suicides are probably much more proactive at preventing suicides.
I’d say that what the school does or does not do probably ranks third in responsibility with respect to causing suicides. First would be environmental circumstances like amount of daylight, weather, being built on cliffs, etc. Second would be type of students attending that school. This is just a guess of course, but UChicago students were pretty notorious for being extremely neurotic about school work, almost obsessive compulsive. While I do think that my coursework was more abundant and harder than most other colleges, including prestigious peer schools (mainly because we had quarters and had four classes per quarter), I’m pretty sure that the same students who put themselves through hell at UChicago would have put themselves through hell at other schools too. It’s just their character. They want to grind themselves to a pulp or they’re not satisfied. With a slightly lighter course load, they would have found ways to still wind themselves up. These students just happen to congregate at UChicago and Cornell because those types of schools offer academic environments that are attractive to masochistic students.
On a side note, is anyone else relieved and almost surprised that none of the students mentioned in the article are Asian?
I find it absolutely counterproductive for these colleges to drive such bright young minds to the point of despair. Seriously, these kids have proven themselves to have the potential by getting into these prestigious institutions in the first place. And you’re gonna throw all that away for the sake of, what? Reputation? It’s not like these kids are lazy or stupid by any stretch of imagination.
For those people who are considering a college with less demanding academic requirements:
Princeton Review Party School Rankings 2010
http://www.popcrunch.com/princeton-review-party-school-rankings-2010/
Top American Party Schools for 2009-2010
http://campuslife.suite101.com/article.cfm/top_american_party_schools_for_20092010
No college experience is complete without beer goggles and partying hearty!
“I find it absolutely counterproductive for these colleges to drive such bright young minds to the point of despair. “
Maybe it comes from an erroneous theory of education—the so-called “boot camp” model that is used to train soldiers, professional athletes, and medical interns. The idea is that you can eliminate those who simply “can’t hack it.”
But then again, how many potential Einsteins are you washing out because they don’t necessarily match your own narrow theory of learning?
Larry,
They also rank the schools by looks. Man, I was totally looking for the wrong criteria when I chose my school! Most of the top rankings tend to be from the South, where it’s warm:
http://www.popcrunch.com/hottest-student-bodies-2009-the-50-best-colleges-ranked-by-looks-10-1
More reason to hate those Ithaca winters! Etain has a point in regards to weather.
Etain,
I also think that there’s a certain kind of student who applies. MIT people, for example, are masochistic. The valedictorian of my high school got accepted to Harvard and MIT, and he turned down Harvard to go to MIT because he thought Harvard would be too easy. (For him, he was probably right.) People usually don’t go to Cornell for the challenge. It’s usually because they qualify for cheaper tuition because the Ag School is a state school, or it’s because (as in my case) they screwed around too much during high school and couldn’t make Brown, Harvard, Yale, etc. It’s preying on the less fortunate!
Anyway, if I had to do it again, I’d shoot for the warm weather.
King,
I agree. That boot camp model makes no sense. Colleges should be teaching kids, not weeding them out!
Also, Larry:
Did those “hottest” rankings mean hottest White women? Or women in general? It doesn’t look too diverse.
U of O is #35. I think you’re in the wrong town. Go Ducks.
I’m with King on this one. The current method of education is totally bollocks. And people have known this for a long time, but that’s just how the system works.
Still, with the system as broken as it is, I pin the problem on an overall lack of perspective from all sides (in effect what Ms. Pelleriti was saying). And a lot of that comes from parents, hardly a surprise in our current society where raising kids is something people think is something you can just pay for…
FWIW, the only reason I had a tough time at CU was because I slacked off way too much. And the only reason I slacked off so much was because I knew I could get by with less. How did I know? Because I went from spending 1-2 hours/subject/NIGHT in HIGH SCHOOL, to 3-4 hours/subject/WEEK.
What caused me the greatest anxiety, however, wasn’t books. It was a lack of money and a lack of a girlfriend. Dude, that sucks when you’re hormones are a-ragin’.
Jaehwan:
Those women in that “Hottest Student Bodies” list are hilarious. I would like to see how they would fare at someplace like Cornell, admist all the engineering, science, and math geeks.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Hawt Body Coeds tongue kissing or licking each other doesn’t quite seem to fit it into the culture of Cornell. LoL.
Wow, I have to agree with Jaehwan. I just took a look at the “hot student bodies” link (which I skipped before) and WOAH is that WHITE! Even when you drill down to the “show more” links.
I guess living here in LA, I’ve got a skewed image of diversity. It hurts my eyes to see so many White bodies with such an obvious bias towards blonde co-eds as the proof of student body hawtness. When you get down to the Florida schools you have a few anglo-hispanics mixed in because it’s unavoidable, and every now and then there’s s 20 girl cheerleading squad with 1 minority in it that evidently couldn’t be photoshoped out.
Notice that no highly minority school seems to make the cut.
I guess I’m just used to a little broader spectrum being represented.
http://kapgar.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/cheerleaders.jpg
Larry,
Maybe the Cornell Engineering types need to adjust their culture to be more accommodating to women of other ethnicities (i.e.: White, White, and White). Haha! Isn’t that the PUA message? Saying that they support interracial dating, but really meaning just White women? Those engineers may also need to open up to women tongue kissing each other. It’s gotta be more exciting than math problems.
King,
I agree with you! Actually, I just thought of something:
Maybe if the media would pay more attention to attractive minority women in colleges, they could attract more minority men. Really, I think if they had interviews and pictures of attractive Asian women in the humanities, I think we could get more Asian guys studying English, Literature, French, whatevs. This way we could get do something about our culture’s overweightedness in one direction. (Yes, it would also attract Rice Chasers…but hey, collateral damage.)
As for attractive black women in colleges, I swear…I have NEVER EVER seen an interview of a black female co-ed that portrayed her in an attractive manner. Think of the damage that that lack of coverage creates. Think of the wonders that media inclusiveness could do for the culture–not just black culture, but American culture in general. That would be inclusiveness.