Anonymous asked: Hi Lena! I'm a long time fan of you and your work. I think that you encourage frank discussion and open talk about sex. But I recently stumbled upon the '09 article that Lucy Caldwell wrote about you. Most of it of course totally offensive. First of all let me say I think it's horrible people treated you like this. I know you've closed the Haravrd issue but I just wanted to know as someone who is considering trying for the Ivy Leaugue- Do you think that Harvard was overall a negative o positive experience for you? Was it worth it to go there? Do you regret writing Sex and the Ivy?
Hah, that’s actually one of my favorite articles published about me! I mean, how many people are called “morally reprehensible” in print at age 19? I only wish I had saved a paper version of that issue. I’ll admit that at the time, I was both upset and deeply confused when The Crimson ran that column as if one student’s opinion on another student’s life had some sort of relevance for the rest of the campus. The writer, Lucy Caldwell, or “the Other LC” (as my friends called her), was also class of 2009 and had a reputation — though in her case, it was for being the Ivy League’s version of Ann Coulter. (Please note that this is the same girl who so infuriated campus liberals with her victim-blaming stance on rape that people actually started a Facebook group objecting to her editorials.) As such, I took Lucy’s opinion of me with a grain of salt, and it probably helped that nearly everyone who talked to me about it, mutual friends included, considered the piece a total bitch move. Mostly though, I thought it was an intellectual cop-out that she chose to focus on attacking my lifestyle rather than engaging with my ideas. When you call someone “morally reprehensible” without justifying the moral system by which you judge them, the argument boils down to “Because I said so”. Which is not much of an argument at all.
But to answer your question: yeah, Harvard sucked a lot of the time, and waking up to a hit piece about me in the student paper was the least of my problems. After my sophomore year of college, I desperately wanted to take a year off. (I even had a job offer in New York, but my mother vetoed the idea.) So, I was actually kind of relieved that I was forced for academic reasons to take a leave of absence after my junior year. It literally saved my sanity, as I spent the spring before my leave in a near-constant state of anxiety. I definitely wouldn’t have been functional enough to finish a senior thesis or plan a conference or take an intensive language class or you know, graduate, if not for the much-needed time off. But although there were many things about Harvard that I hated, there was also plenty of stuff for which I was grateful, including the totally undeserved academic and professional legitimacy offered by my degree. And despite what some people have tried to imply, I do not have any regrets about writing Sex And The Ivy. Perhaps I would have been “happier” if I’d trudged along without rocking the boat, but fuck that. I’m just grateful that when I needed to escape campus to preserve my sanity, I had the means to do so (first, by crashing with my friends Tara and Tiffanie, who lived in an off-campus apartment, and later by moving in with my now-boyfriend, Patrick). And the best outcome of my time off? I met some really wonderful underclassmen when I returned (my Feminist Coming Out Day co-founder, for example), and I wouldn’t have developed those friendships otherwise.
My advice for college is to practice self-care as best you can. I know way too many people who wanted to off themselves during undergrad, and though my depression never got to the point where I was contemplating death, it was sufficiently disruptive that I felt like I couldn’t live in close proximity to my peers anymore. Depression is also not a phenomenon exclusive to the Ivy League, though I do think that my particular high-pressure, status-oriented environment fueled many of my insecurities. Because most of us get thrown into college like we’re full-fledged adults, we’re forced to figure out for ourselves what we can handle and what we can’t, and I think there was a tendency among my peers to want to prove that we’re good enough to do everything. I can’t tell you how many seemingly perfect kids I knew were on the verge of a breakdown at any given moment. There aren’t any easy answers, and one of the most irritating things people would tell me during my depression is that things weren’t so bad, because I was at Harvard, after all! Woo-fucking-hoo. That’s really not much consolation to someone whose very anguish stems from the fact that they are at Harvard and feel trapped. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not entitled to your anger or sadness or frustration. Those feelings are sometimes perfectly appropriate reactions to a shitty set of circumstances.
On the bright side, I like Harvard a hell of a lot more now that I’m not a student there, and of the classmates with whom I do keep in touch, over half are other kids who took time off. Already looking forward to a sure-to-be-awkward encounter with “the Other LC” at our five-year reunion.
More burning questions? Ask Lena.
Related posts on Harvard and mental health:
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On Harvard and (Un)Happiness
A Fat Envelope Is Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be
Reader Question: “What other colleges did you apply to besides Harvard?”
Reader Question: What Do You Think Of Affirmative Action In College Admissions?
How To Get Into Harvard: Tips From A Former Ivy League Sex Blogger