My MIT Quarter-Life Crisis

This is my experience with depression at MIT.

I was relatively carefree my first two years at the Institute. Then classes got harder, I was in organic chemistry (5.12) for the third time, and I couldn’t keep up. I had somehow skated by up until then because in my life, I’d been clever enough that I knew how to get satisfactory results on a minimal amount of effort. As Jeff Winger says on Community, “The funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without doing any work.” Thus, I continued the bad habits I’d unintentionally amassed since high school, not learning anything and cramming and pulling all-nighters at the last minute. It was a miracle I lasted as long as I did with my anti-learning way of studying.

The summer before my junior year, I found myself in Beijing, but not of my own accord, unlike my best friends who were in Germany and Ecuador. Somehow I’d missed the memo in the fall to apply for MISTI (MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives) or figure out what to do with my summer earlier. (The same thing later happened to me with applying to grad school.[1] It was a symptom of a greater problem, of not being invested enough in my own future to prepare for it.) I wound up getting an internship last-minute through the help of my dad, and I’m pretty sure that by the end, I had earned less than what my flights cost me.

While I was in China, I fell in love with a boy who asked me what I wanted to do with my life after college. I’d been plodding forward in bioengineering (course 20) as my parents were doctors and researchers and I’d been surrounded by biology my entire life. I had reached the midpoint of my MIT career, and was doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing — as a good daughter, as someone who had always loved science, as an MIT student who was supposed to be an engineer. But I wasn’t doing it for me. Not one bit. I had this realization, brought on by someone I barely knew, who was unaffiliated with MIT, that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with my life.

The thought was crippling, but outweighing that in my head was the notion that it was too late to change my mind. So I stuck with bioengineering.

Finally, a couple weeks into junior fall, I broke. Deep down I knew I didn’t want to be doing this, and I realized… it was never too late. Better to change my career path now than a year, five years, twenty years down the road.

I was the most lost I’d ever been, and I had just moved to a new dorm — Senior House — with my best friend. We did absolutely everything together. But both our lives were going through transition. While I dropped all my classes, she began spending more and more time with a boy in her major. It wasn’t long until they spent every evening together, cooking, psetting, having sex. She was so involved in the new relationship that, when I didn’t emerge from my room in two weeks, it took a visit and question from my other friend (“where’s Janet?”) for her to notice.

Those two weeks were the lowest point in my life until then. At first my revelation and decision to quit my major made me feel absolutely free, independent, and ready to take charge of a new life. Then, panic and anxiety set in. I didn’t know my path forward, not even the first step. I knew what I didn’t want to do, but not what I wanted to do. I couldn’t talk to my parents about this for fear of being the worst disappointment possible — and I was already feeling that guilt on a daily basis. I couldn’t talk to my friends, who all seemed so sure of themselves and were doing well in the majors and career paths they had chosen. I felt like my best friend had replaced me with her boyfriend.[2] I felt so alone.

I rewatched the entire series of Sex and the City and FRIENDS, because it’s easy to lose yourself in these virtual worlds where life is rosier and nothing you can’t recover from ever happens. I didn’t go outside for weeks or bathe or brush my teeth.

I don’t remember exactly how I made it out of my hole. My two best friends made fresh spring rolls for me one night and banged on my door intermittently over the course of an hour just to get me to come out. I didn’t want to face them because I was so ashamed of my own self and behavior, and came out in the middle of the night, like a cockroach, to eat the whole plate. After days of eating nothing but crackers and water, it was phenomenal.

I believe a deadline was coming up (the only way I could ever motivate myself to do something) — probably add date, the last date you could add new classes. I managed to officially change my major to course 11 — urban studies and planning — and start a whole new set of classes. When I finally made it to these new classes, I immediately felt I had found where I belonged. I was so woefully ignorant on the topics I wanted to study — international development and public policy — and here was my chance to learn about them. My parents and grandparents had deeply affected me with dark stories of living through China’s Cultural Revolution and I always found it strange that, on this same planet, people were dying or suffering in ways I found unfathomable while growing up in my suburban American bubble.

I made it out of MIT in one piece, with an extra semester to show for my quarter-life crisis. My depression, unfortunately, has stuck with me from that first period and I have to be careful not to let it spiral out of control and take me out of society. It’s happened often enough that I know what the signs are— it’s often triggered by having no sense of meaningful purpose at that time in my life, whether career-wise, socially, or personally. I start checking out of being a “real” person and fulfilling my responsibilities, even the smallest things like taking care of my own food intake and hygiene. I stay up all night so I have to deal with reality even less. When it gets out of control is when I am no longer a functioning member of society and no longer want to be a part of this world.

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College can be stressful for anyone because of its purpose — to prepare students for the real world which they are often scared to enter, because they don’t know who they want to be or what they want to do. At MIT, when you are surrounded by thousands of brilliant peers who have seemingly figured out their lives from the start, it can be even worse. You have to recognize that everyone is just pretending, everyone has something beautiful to share as well as an insecurity to hide.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Stop comparing yourself to others and hold yourself to your own standards. If you can’t survive on 6 hours of sleep a night, don’t do it. It’s not worth it to risk your health while your body and brain are still growing. Try to figure out what things are really adding value to your life. Is there that over-achieving acquaintance who always seems to be bragging about how much work they’ve accomplished or how little they’ve slept? Don’t hang out with people who need to push others down to feel better about themselves, or people who are an overall negative influence in your life. But do reach out to others, because we all thrive best when we care about everyone doing well. When we care about and contribute to our community’s well-being as well as our own.

Talk to the people on your hall. Eat together. Find shared interests, or new interests! Life may be focused on academics at this current time, but there is really so much more to life; it is a gift to enjoy in a myriad of ways. Listen to good music, however you define good. Take advantage of being in Cambridge and Boston, and stay here for a summer if you feel like you can’t fully experience the city while you’re a student. Remember that there are resources to help you if you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, lost, or unhappy. Don’t wait to ask for help — we have all been there and that is what S^3, MIT Mental Health, Career Services, GRTs, Medlinks, etc. are there for.[3] Above all, remember that you’re not alone, that we’re all in this beautiful, crazy, unpredictable world together, and you can make it anything your heart desires.

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Notes:

[1] After two years in the professional world, I knew I wanted to go back to school, get a higher degree, and — most importantly — take full advantage of institutional learning. I applied last fall and am currently in the midst of deciding where I will be getting my master’s in city planning, although it’s looking likely that it will be the University of Southern California!

[2] That friend and I are still best friends (and I’m also very close with her boyfriend, whom she’s still with). Not long after the spring roll incident, she wrote me a long note that I still have, apologizing for not being there more for me and saying how much she missed me. We recovered quickly. It’s taken me too long to realize that relationships are two-way and when one party feels that something is awry, she is responsible for communicating it to the other. I had only seen our dwindling time together as a loss for me rather than a gain in her happiness and a changing relationship dynamic. We may have been spending less time together but that in no way changed how much love and care we had, and will always have, for each other. Communicate to the people in your life and avoid building up resentment and needless negativity. Your friends are not trying to hurt you.

[3] The career counselors at the GECD (MIT Global Education & Career Development) gave me great advice when I was lost, telling me to reach out to alumni through the Infinite Connection to see what kinds of careers they had and to hear how they had gotten there from their MIT beginnings. Your department should have these kinds of resources too; this also helped me with post-graduation job hunting. Please take full advantage of our wonderful alumni network. And do not hesitate to reach out to me personally if you’d like to chat for any reason. janet.li[at]alum.mit.edu. ❤