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:

Reader Question: “My biggest fear is that people will find out I’m unhappy. How do you do it?”
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

Anonymous asked: So i'm deciding between Stanford and Harvard next year and even before seeing your tumblr, i've heard much about the horrors of Harvard. Do you think Stanford is a happier place? Or would i face the same unhappiness there too?

Congratulations, that’s a pretty enviable position to be in — though in light of your concerns, maybe not so much? Anyway, I hate to generalize, so I think the best thing for you to do would be to ask Stanford students about their experience. I don’t know the institution’s attitude toward mental health, and as such, wouldn’t feel comfortable making any grand predictions. I’d also caution you against assuming that Harvard is automatically going to be a horrible place, because that’s not necessarily the case either. Even though my friends and I found Harvard to be an incubator for mental illness, there were plenty of kids who loved all four years they spent there and had no issues at all. (That said, about 80 percent have also reported depression, but I have no idea if that is any more or less common than at any other school.) So, even if you did go to Harvard, I couldn’t really tell you for certain that you would definitely be unhappy. Nor do I believe in the trite advice that “life is what you make of it”, because external factors (such as your peer group, health services, etc.) all have an impact on your experience and it would be overly optimistic to assume otherwise. That said, I think going in with a clear sense of potential triggers for unhappiness (competition, overwork, class barriers, to name a few of my own) is already a good start toward making a smooth transition to college.

(And one more disclaimer: the flip side of “X place is definitely going to suck” is thinking that “X place is definitely going to be awesome”. Pomona College, for example, has been consistently named the school with the happiest student population, but I know alums for whom college was not all sunshine and rainbows. So there’s that.)

Related posts on mental health and depression:

Reader Question: “My biggest fear is that people will find out I’m unhappy. How do you do it?”
On Harvard and (Un)Happiness
Why I Left Yale: Mental Illness & Higher Education (Meggy Wang)

Anonymous asked: Lena,

Thanks for sharing your story. And the link to the article on Meggy's experience at Yale. As incredibly angry as they make me (at the administration, not you) - because I've been there too, and I honestly don't think people who haven't gone through this can understand - it helps. I'm sitting here writing the last paper of my college career - on perceptions of mental illness, no less - and...it's hard. To go back through those memories, to read other people's accounts and try to remain objective (if that's even the right thing to do), to wonder every single day, on the eve of graduation and completing therapy, if I'm really healed, if there's going to be a relapse, and what I can do so no one I know ever has to go through this.

Sorry for the rant. I'm not really sure what my point is, except that I would love for you to keep writing, and advocating, and doing what you love and being really, really good at it. And on another note, I'm sorry for your loss - my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.

Thanks and take care.

Thanks for sharing YOUR story. A lot of people write to me to say that they feel alone in their depression and that they, too, fear they’ll never be “really okay”. I think talking about this openly, even if anonymously, is a great step toward destigmatizing mental illness, particularly among those who are assumed to be unaffected by it.

Since so many of you have gone through similar struggles, l encourage those who are comfortable sharing to submit their story here. (You can do so anonymously.) I’ll publish those anecdotes, along with more thoughts on this topic, in the upcoming week.

Related posts on mental health and depression:

Reader Question: “My biggest fear is that people will find out I’m unhappy. How do you do it?”
On Harvard and (Un)Happiness
Why I Left Yale: Mental Illness & Higher Education (Meggy Wang)