An Open Letter to College Students on Suicide

The collegiate epoch is, understandably, ridden with stress and confusion. Nothing quite prepares you for it; not the incessant and irritatingly light-hearted college prep books nor the conspicuously censored stories from your parents' experiences. Buzzfeed articles, littered with topical gifs and vague advice on not gaining too much weight your freshman year, are more of a hindrance than a help and you'll quickly find that that romanticized college atmosphere born of listicles is a myth conjured to justify the inordinate amount of stress that will be thrust upon you.

This is not an attempt to scare you or dissuade you from coming to college. Quite the opposite, actually. I want you to be prepared for the veritable shitstorm that is bound to tear through your psyche at the first mention of "the rest of your life" and inevitably find its way through an advisor's or professor's lips. It may seem petty and, frankly, a bit melodramatic that something as vague and in the future as, well, your future, could cause such a mental crisis. But make no mistake, stress can cause turmoil and, at its very worst, can kill.

In a recent piece by the New York Times, Julie Scelfo investigates the growing number of suicides on college campuses across the United States. Among the profiled schools, my own university finds a significant place, due in part to the highly publicized disappearance and eventual tragic discovery of Anna Smith last year. In addition to Smith, the university faced two more tragedies in the form of suicide. But Appalachian State was not alone in its grief.

Ms. Holleran was the third of six Penn students to commit suicide in a 13-month stretch, and the school is far from the only one to experience a so-called suicide cluster. This school year, Tulane lost four students and Appalachian State at least three — the disappearance in September of a freshman, Anna M. Smith, led to an 11-day search before she was found in the North Carolina woods, hanging from a tree. Cornell faced six suicides in the 2009-10 academic year. In 2003-4, five New York University students leapt to their deaths.

To make matters worse, suicide rates among the 15-24 years-old age range are on the rise, "from 9.6 deaths [in 2007] per 100,000 to 11.1, in 2013." In addition, college counselors have seen an increase in psychological issues among students.

But a survey of college counseling centers has found that more than half their clients have severe psychological problems, an increase of 13 percent in just two years. Anxiety and depression, in that order, are now the most common mental health diagnoses among college students, according to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State.

Why are we losing our peers to depression and suicide? Obviously, there's no solid and satisfying answer to the age-old question of what causes this sort of melancholy reaction to life. It's wrapped in layers of nature and nurture that no one is really qualified to make a blanket statement about. It's individual to each and every person and to try and explain it is futile. That being said, there are some interesting insights on what, precisely, it feels like to be one of these confusingly suicidal individuals. Namely, the feeling of falling short.

The author of the article posits that depression often befalls people not who have nothing, but those who have had something and lost it. This discrepancy acts as a gauge by which we judge ourselves and our seemingly hopeless attempts at pulling ourselves towards our idealistic goals. In this line of thought, it's easy to see why a college freshmen with their sights set on medical school might fall into a deep depression upon that first C. Things that would ordinarily be met with a slight bout of irritation or disappointment are instead blown into stratospheric proportions, making people question the validity of their lives.

Is there something or someone to blame here? Perhaps, but to point fingers is an exercise in presumption, and forgoes the sacred process of critical thought. Personally, I think the societal expectations thrust upon incoming (and, indeed, returning) college students play a large role in creating this self-imposed ideal for how one should tackle college. The never-ending tide of college do's and don't's fashion a narrative by which many believe they must adhere to, effectively rendering perspective impotent in the wake of expectation.

Which, I suppose, is my main point. Expectation is the death of contentedness. It rips apart any sort of small happiness you may find in every day life and shoves it under the microscope, forcing you to look at your perceived failures. Expectation takes the form of candy-coated, peppy optimism about the college experience to-be. Even the asinine and oft-touted phrase "college experience" reeks of lofty expectations and inevitable disappointment.

But disappointment is good. These thoughts should not be taken as nihilistic omens for a wholly depressing future. On the contrary, they should be of some relief. I want you to know that you can fail, and do so miserably, without the fear that life as you know it will end. Because "life as you know it" is a mythology conjured by self-indulgent media outlets and the facade of your friends' impossibly interesting social media experiences.

Failure cuts through the bullshit. The disappointment accompanying it lays life as it is at your feet, warts and all. These are not enemies to your happiness, but agents of truth, designed to save you from the illusion that life, and in this case college, if going to be a constant parade of great times and endless smiles. College is going to suck at times. It's going to make you want to pack up everything and join the French Foreign Legion, without so much as a look back. You'll stumble upon worries you never thought you'd have and feel the prick of real life steadily shuffling you towards that most terrifying of leaps.

This is the way it is. And that is ok. We are all collectively tearing our hair out and agonizing over the vague future that we once thought might manifest itself some time between freshman year and graduation. But there is no magical moment of clarity, no sudden enlightenment. And to expect that it will occur is the start of a dangerous path towards despair.

I am not looking to scare. I am looking to prepare you for an easier time in college. Whether you're preparing for the first time or returning to another year, I want you to have some perspective on the whole damn comedy and realize that expectations are best trashed in favor of living honestly. And believe me, you will enjoy college. There will be cinematic moments seemingly lifted straight from pop culture. You will laugh, have a good time and lay out on the quad at least once or twice before the long winter. But with all this comes the other, less spritely element. Rather than push it to the side, I want to lay it in front of you so that when it rears its head in your own life, you will greet it with a nod rather than a scream.

Three students took their lives on Appalachian State's campus this past year. Whether they were victims of college's lofty expectations or their own demons, we may never know. What I do know is that nothing in college is worth taking your life over and that for all its stress and overwhelming nature, its still just a small facet of life in general. I'm sure you've heard that one before, though.