In my second and third year of graduate school, my research was under a tight bottleneck. Together with other stress both in academic and in life, it made me lose 10 pounds in 3 months, face interpersonal issues, and led to suicidal thoughts. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough support at that time. Questions from people close to me such as “I don’t understand why [what you are working on] is it so hard” and “I can’t believe a Princeton graduate student has nothing in their mind” were hurtful and made me blame myself for procrastinating and not working hard enough. I was living in perpetual guilt. One day a professor saw me much thinner than before, and asked me to take care of myself. I immediately cried. Someone cared about me! Later on, I got better or worse from time to time. In the Spring of my fourth year, I once again had a lot of trouble concentrating and suicidal thoughts returned. I decided to go home for 10 days to take care of myself. It turned out to be much needed. After I got back to Princeton, I decided that I didn’t want to buy an expensive plane ticket to go home every time I’m not feeling well, so I finally turned to CPS for help. Since then, I started learning more about myself and methods to help myself. I also became more open with friends and spent more time doing what interests me rather than being the person other people expect me to be. These changes made me feel more powerful day by day. I’m still on the journey of recovery: I’m worried that the change of season and shortened day time will reignite my depression, and the discouraging voice from the past is still in my head to this day. The good thing is I can finally openly talk about what I’ve experienced.
Anecdote #11
