Freshman Syndrome: Why They Can’t Stand Up

Kathryn de Witt ended up at the University of Pennsylvania as expected: she was an activist and an honors student, and in her first two weeks, without slowing down, she enrolled in all the groups and joined the same student community that her parents had when they were at Stanford. But when she met her classmates, she began to doubt herself for the first time.

“One of my new friends was a figure skater and competed in world championships. Another was the winner of a science competition organized by Intel. Everyone around me was such an interesting people! I would like to be the same.”

It seemed that classmates have everything you can imagine. Every morning the administration sent out another email about the achievements of the students of the faculty. Some girls came to class in stunning outfits and perfect make-up. Catherine de Witt had acne. Someone discussed future prestigious internships in well-known companies.

Everyone around her, judging by the photos on the networks, went to amazing parties every night, made new friends, and even their food on Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) looked tastier.

The mid-semester mid-term results placed Katrin not in the top, as it always happened at school, but somewhere in the middle of the list. She received another blow to her self-esteem when at a lecture, glancing at the mobile phone of the guy sitting next to her, she read: “Who should I talk to? With her? Yes, I would rather jump from a plane.

When Madison Holleran, also a freshman, reputedly talented and popular, stepped off the roof, in a blog dedicated to her, Katherine wrote: “What the hell, girl? I should have left! You had something to live for!” By this time, she herself had already written farewell letters on pink paper and bought a pack of blades.

Being happy is easy and natural

Madison Holleran was the third of six University of Pennsylvania students to die that year.

American statistics show that more than half of college students now have serious psychological problems, and depression and anxiety are the most common diagnoses among students.

What is the reason? Back in 2003, a Duke University study talked about the stress experienced by female students who need to be “perfect, but without visible obvious effort.” Stanford even has a name for this phenomenon: duck syndrome.

The duck glides along the water surface smoothly and thoughtfully — but this is if you do not see how it constantly works with its paws under water.

I would like to translate it as «duckling syndrome». A lot of new things after graduation unrest fall upon the freshman — a new city, life apart from the family, a different rhythm and new acquaintances.

University of Pennsylvania Director of Psychology William Alexander observed that current freshmen react differently to tests: “For some students, making a mistake is incredibly important. The slightest remark, something that earlier, in our years, could cause a feeling of dissatisfaction, a feeling that you need to work harder next time, is now perceived by them as a sentence to themselves.

Mita Kumar, who has been working as a psychologist in this service for 16 years, says the same thing. To get a “good” mark instead of “excellent” for some of them means to crumble into the smallest fragments: “What we would call troubles, they feel like a complete failure.”

Catherine de Witt told how she knew from childhood that she should go to an elite college. Although her parents did not pressure her, nevertheless, from their conversations about the importance of doing everything well, from the stories about how other children achieve success, she understood that a lot was expected of her.

“I felt that I would be happy if others were happy with what I do. I am a person who lives according to a plan. I always have a plan for a year, for 3 years — even for the next 5 years. For herself, she decided that, after graduating from university, she would teach mathematics.

She woke up at 7:30, stayed in meetings until 22:00, worked 10 hours a week under the terms of her university financial aid, and studied—fiercely would be the most appropriate epithet—preparing furiously for every math class. .

Mid-semester mid-term results showed that she had only 60 out of 100 — she decided that she would fail further tests and that she could say goodbye to the dream of teaching mathematics. “I saw a clear picture of my future,” Katrin says. “And when it collapsed, I didn’t begin to imagine a different picture.”

The pain of not being who she thought she was was unbearable. The only way out, as the crooked logic of depression told her, was to die. She found out if the university was giving back tuition fees to the parents of students who had committed suicide, and began cutting herself “to prepare and get used to the pain.”

the sun on Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia)

The existential question «Why am I here?» usually accompanies the question «How do I live?». We define ourselves and what we are worth based on comparison with those around us. In an era when much of the communication takes place on the Internet, such comparisons are made after looking at the screen, and we accept the image on it as the truth.

Forgetting that the image was carefully edited before and is, like any photo or any story about yourself, only part of a big picture, and besides, a very subjective part of it. Modern means of communication make a huge contribution to the formation of a distorted perception of other people.

Students do not believe that anyone other than them can experience suffering.

Director of Psychological Services at Cornell University, Gregory Ells, responds to students who say that everyone but them looks happy:

“I go to work and, as I greet everyone, I note: “this student has depression and has recently started a course of antidepressants,”

“this one was recently in the hospital,” “she has eating disorders.” As a psychotherapist, I know a lot about how the external picture differs from what is inside. ”

existential impotence

The suicide of Madison Holleran showed the contrast between bright pictures on Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) and darkness in the soul. Until the last day, Madison posted sunny, bright pictures in which she smiles, friendly pushes one of her friends at a party, but she told her older sister that her life cannot be compared with the life of her former classmates, with the posts of those with whom she went to school together.

An hour before she killed herself, Madison posted on Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) the last photo, tender and romantic, taken by her from that very roof — festive lights twinkling through the tree branches on Rittenhouse Square.

Instead of «I failed,» or even «I failed,» they think, «I’m a failure.» The cultural phenomenon of perfectionism and hyper-responsibility in the United States has spawned a generation of children and their parents. who are overfixed on success, but are unable to lose.

Stanford’s dean of freshmen Julia Litcote-Hames says, “I’ve asked simple questions in meetings with our new students, and they’ve stunned them. They could talk about their achievements, but they could not answer me, for example, the question “who am I”!”

At the same time, «helicopter» parents, who, as you know, «hover» over their children, have transformed into «lawn mower» parents, who literally cut off the slightest blade of grass that would interfere with the movement of their child. And their children meet such care very favorably. She called the inability to face difficulties, make life choices and the lack of self-awareness in today’s students «existential impotence».

Roses in a basket

In the meantime, Catherine de Witt wrote farewell letters to her parents and all her friends on pink rose paper and stacked them neatly on her desk. Luckily for her, her roommate noticed that she had stopped going to the dining room and began inquiring about her health. Katherine admitted that she really was depressed, but she had already passed.

In confirmation, she laughingly showed her bundle of farewell letters and immediately threw them into the trash. But when she returned to the room a few hours later, her neighbor saw that the letters were again lying in a neat pile on the table, and she ran to the dean. Katrin was called to the faculty psychologist, who insisted on hospitalization.

Six months later, after serious treatment, she returned to the faculty.

And after the poor grades that started this story, over time, she was at the top of the list, just like in school. But now she takes it calmly, says that she is in no hurry with specialization and will not plan hard for the future at all until she gains experience.