Homeward Bound and Tied

In a May 30 Crimson article, Steven S. Lee and Dev A. Patel addressed the challenges students face when taking mental health leaves from the college.  The article says, "For a handful of students each year, Harvard’s environment is too much to bear. In search of wellness, these undergraduates leave Harvard, returning home to a world without the worries of college life.”

As someone about to return from medical leave, I wish to address what I feel are some serious misunderstandings embedded in the above statement.

People do not take medical leaves because “Harvard’s environment is too much to bear.”  Saying this implies that those who do so are “less than,” that they do not measure up to the majority of students who complete Harvard in four years’ time. Although it may not have been the writers’ intention, as a student who took a leave of absence on account of anorexia and depression, this was the sentiment I perceived.

I did not leave the college because I could not cope with the “worries of college life.”  Quite the opposite—I wanted desperately to engage in the worries of college life. I tried to care about papers, attend every meeting or rehearsal, and date.  No matter how hard I tried, however, I could not go 20 minutes without obsessively counting calories or trying on a costume without wanting to vomit. I could not look out of a third floor window of Lamont without contemplating hurling myself through the glass—anything that would distract me from my prison of self-invalidating thoughts. There was something broken inside of me.

When it became clear that I could no longer function as a person, let alone as a Harvard student, I returned to “a world without the worries of college life.”

It was horrendous.

Before and during my time at Harvard, I had felt as though my own thoughts were eating away at me from the inside.  But the social interactions and continuous mental stimulation Harvard provided prevented me from falling wholly and completely into the grip of my own frightening emotions. Driving away from Cambridge, I felt completely lost.  Away from school, a feeling of intellectual atrophy joined my cannibalistic thoughts.

The combination of the two was unbearable; two hours after stepping out of my family’s car, I was feverishly scouring the Internet for jobs.  I wrote cover letter after cover letter hoping to feel, at least for a moment, that rush of being a Harvard student on a mission.

A week-and-a-half later, I’d landed a job.  Three-and-a-half weeks later, I’d grown bored;  nothing could replace the constant intellectual challenges and opportunities that make Harvard unique. And so I began the application process to return for the spring semester.

Despite the rule that students on mental health leave must take a full six-month absence, a rule of which I had not been informed until after taking leave, I was determined and well-nourished. How could Harvard say “no”?

A 12-page re-application essay and an hour-and-a-half long interview later, Harvard said “no.”

Feeling cut off from my peers and desperately wanting to reactivate my crumbling neuro-pathways, I took a challenging job in a new city right as summer application season hit, satisfying my need for invigorating stress.

Soon after I’d settled into a new balancing act, it was time to re-re-apply to Harvard.  After several phone calls during which I assured a UHS Mental Health representative that I was not trying to waste the University’s time, I realized that if I was going to convince these people to let me back in, I probably needed to figure out why I had left in the first place.

In that moment the answer hit me: I wanted to go back, but I wasn’t positive that I deserved to go back.  More than that, I realized that I had never felt that I deserved to attend Harvard.  After the acceptance letter euphoria had dwindled, I had convinced myself that my admission was a major fluke. “You have absolutely no intelligence and no potential,” I repeatedly told myself, “Maybe if you are skinny enough, no one will notice that you have nothing to offer.”

While on leave, I attended an event where a man to whom I had just been introduced decided to spend the entire evening loudly and explicitly theorizing, to anyone who would listen, the various reasons a “girl like me” could possibly have been admitted to Harvard– none of which related to my intellect or Pollyanna idealism.  During my run the next day, as I attempted to sweat out my disgust, a new thought came ringing through my head: “I did not deserve that. I am worth more.”

The broken record of self-abuse had finally stopped.

Experiences during my time away, both good and bad, convinced me that I was completely worthy of my place at this illustrious institution I had grown to call “home.”  For some, open acknowledgment of the validity of their acceptance could be called arrogance.  For a former anorexic and someone who has continuously struggled with self-destructive insecurity, I call it progress. Humility is vital, but not if it comes at the expense of a sense of self-worth.

Armed with this new balance, I sat down to write the re-re-application essay.

Please understand that going home is not a respite.  Sure, there are fewer all-nighters and it is much easier to sleep on Fridays without “Party Rock Anthem” blaring outside the window. But Harvard students do not set aside everything they have ever worked for in order to relax.  They do so to figure out what is going wrong.

For me, returning to Harvard will be extremely difficult.  There may be mornings when I watch a Lamont sunrise from a third-story window. But I will take an unapologetic swig of mocha and resolutely return to my paper, completely confident in the knowledge that I am more than strong enough—and I have every right—to continue typing.

Students do not go on mental health leave to rest; they leave to return.

Editors’ Note: We made the decision to run this op-ed anonymously due to the private and intensely personal nature of its content. It is our hope that this piece will bring to light issues that affect many members of our community and inform campus-wide conversations on mental health at Harvard.

—Marina N. Bolotnikova and Michael F. Cotter, Editorial Chairs

—Robert S. Samuels, President