Depressed and need advice

9 points by bookreader 12 years ago | 43 comments

I'm an active HN poster under a different name, but I'm posting this anonymously. I'm dealing with some situational depression and need advice.

I've been on a gap year from an Ivy League school after having a bad freshman year (I did well academically, but I had social and personal problems that I was dealing with). I took a gap year with the possibility of dropping out.

I've done pretty well over the gap year. I worked at a programming job and also did some contracting, and managed to save about 18k. I was also able to work through some of the future computer science classes by myself (learned C, graphs, trees, and basic algorithms).

The problem is, I come from an Asian family and am dealing with expectations that I return to school (from both friends and family). I don't feel ready to return, and I feel like I'm becoming depressed and anxious again.

I know this seems like a first world problem, but I just need some perspective and advice. I feel like if I drop out, I'll be okay emotionally and health wise. I think I'll be able to continue self teaching (I'm decently smart, scored 2330 on the SAT and did well in multivariable calc freshman year).

Thanks for any advice. I've just been very depressed and unhappy about the prospect of going back to school, and I'm starting to think it's the wrong decision.

spoiler 12 years ago |

You should see a doctor.

Its very unlikely that you are getting depressed at the prospect of going to university. It's more likely that you are suffering from depression, that the prospect of going back to uni is making you anxious, which in turn causes stress and people who are depressed have a very different response to stress than people who are not. Also, think of depression as a hole, and stress like this huge bulldozer that digs into it, and you are always at the bottom of the hole, and it just gets deeper and deeper. Eventually it can get too deep.

People who are not depressed can't understand the way stress feels for someone who is depressed, though.

Depression can have roots in some emotional problems, but it's also common for it to be a purely physical condition, too. I am depressed (it's being treated) and I can't guarantee you whether you are depressed or not (if you are, it sounds like a light/mild cases, which is good I believe), but the way you described your situation makes me think that you might be, and a doctor could definitely help you. If not with the depression, then at least with your anxiety and "social" problems.

The problem with depression is that it just gets worse and worse, and there is no stopping it on your own.

You can also develop depression at any stage in your life.

Disclaimer: I have a very bad case of Major Depressive Disorder, I suspect since I was a kid, which almost ruined my life before a friend made me treat it. So I researched a lot about it, but I'm by no means an expert!

bookreader 12 years ago | |

I think I might be slightly depressed, but the prospect of going back to college is making me unhappy (I think I'm pretty certain of this, but I don't want to go through all the reasons). I did well academically freshman year despite my depression, and at this point I'm mostly wondering how bad dropping out would be for me career wise (and maybe socially).

I feel confident that I can make friends outside of school, and while I'm worried about my parent's and friend's reactions to my dropping out, I feel like that shouldn't be the deciding factor.

spoiler 12 years ago | | |

Of course it shouldn't!

If you believe it makes you unhappy, and not simply causing you stress, then you shouldn't go back. I realise your parents and friends might disapprove at first, but you should change their minds by showing them you can do what makes you happy and be successful.

It shouldn't make any difference in you social life, because if someone cares that much, they are probably snobby as fuck.

However, it might make a difference to you in later life. Russell Tovey (British actor) said he always feels ashamed for not having a degree in acting (or whatever it's called, I honestly forgot the term... Drama?) when people talked about which schools they went to. Your parents are probably just scared that you might develop self esteem issues like these.

I am not sure if it will limit your career choices, but you can always compensate with a kickass portfolio!

atsaloli 12 years ago | | |

I dropped out and am doing well career wise. In computer systems engineering it's the results that matter, not diplomas.

auslegung 12 years ago |

Here's where I'm coming from: a student of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history. Worked in the Helping Professions for 5+ years, lived in South Korea for over a hear, traveled to China a few times, and as such have made friends with several Asians back home in America. I think I can understand what the pressures are like from your friends and family, and I think I can understand why they feel the need to pressure you, at least to some small extent. However, I may be wildly off, in which case please ignore my ramblings, and I hope not to cause any more frustration for you.

Here's my real concern: not that you make money, or that you make your parents happy (or even that you make yourself happy), but that you are able to identify what is happening at the root of all this, and that you are able to navigate it. When that happens, you will become happy, and you will provide the time, the reason, and the opportunity for your parents to become happy about you, though whether or not they choose to is ultimately up to them, not you.

Here are my questions: What is the problem with your situation? (I can assume from what you've typed, but it isn't explicitly stated, and I hate assuming) Where does the problem come from? Where does your sense of identify originate?

My suspicion: there is an identity issue at the root of this (or at least near the root). We all get our identity from somewhere. We were all meant to get a healthy identify from our parents, though not all of us can. Many of us have parents who were not given their own healthy identity from their own parents, which makes it difficult to pass on a healthy sense of identity to us. Where there's a lack of identify (or unhealthy identity, these are essentially the same things with different terminology), poor boundaries are set in place. I highly recommend the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend <http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap....

Your hesitancy to return to school may be wrapped up in the bad stuff you experienced there. That does not mean you should just go back and tough it out; it means that you have not healed from whatever happened. If you can heal from that (and without knowing what it is, I don't know where to point you), you may find yourself wanting to go back to school. (This imagination technique does not provide solid answers, just hints about what is going on in you. Take it with a grain of salt) Take a few minutes to imagine that you are 100%, completely healed from whatever bad stuff happened your freshmen year. Really let it sink in. Everything is fixed, and none of that stuff can ever happen again. If you are able to imagine that and let it go to the core of your being, do you still want to stay away from school?

If what I'm saying seems to fit so far, get that book. It is a pretty dry read, but the ideas are amazing. If what I'm saying does not fit, I apologize for taking your time. I'd really like to see you get through this, healed of any issues that could cause depression ever again for you.

ekanes 12 years ago |

If you feel confident you'd be happy as a developer or an entrepreneur, and given how you feel I think you should drop out. The real world will teach you much more than school. Developers can and are judged on what they've DONE (not by all companies but by many, and certainly enough) and entrepreneurs are judged only by what they've done. The degree doesn't matter imho. Background: I dropped out (data point of one, I know!) of comp sci after first year, ~18 years ago, and have never looked back. Caveat: If you would be a developer, you'd have to be willing to live in a large/progressive city to find the (many!) companies happy to hire you based on what you've done. Go build stuff. School isn't for everyone.

fusiongyro 12 years ago |

You should come to New Mexico Tech. We have a great CS program which is essentially throwing you in the deep end and seeing if you can swim. We are far, far away from your overbearing family and whatever horrifying social situation at your old school, over here in Socorro, New Mexico. Even if you got no financial assistance at all, you could pay for two or three years just with the 18K you have saved up now, and that's out-of-state tuition. In reality, with a decent GPA they would probably pay half and in a year you would qualify for in-state tuition cutting it in half again. The students here are mellow and have nothing to do but study. A low key environment, you would be a big fish in a small pond.

Worked for me. :)

rdouble 12 years ago | |

Your math seems off. I looked at the New Mexico Tech website, and it estimates that the costs per semester are around $15,000.

http://www.nmt.edu/tuition-and-fees

fusiongyro 12 years ago | | |

Tuition seems to have gone up since I last looked.

$4K of that cost is based on staying in the dorms. You can rent a house for $800-1000/month in Socorro, split 2 to 4 ways, and there are studio apartments in the area for as low as $250. Still, these costs are essentially for your first year; after that it goes down considerably, and if you have a 3.25 or 3.5 you're eligible for a $4/5K/year transfer scholarship.

I have no idea where they got that $1600 "travel" cost estimate from.

impendia 12 years ago |

I'd recommend going back to school. When you go:

* Join some exercise or sports club. Martial arts, ultimate frisbee, swimming -- anything.

* Ask a few women on dates. If you're at all like I was, you will make an awkward mess of it and get rejected. This is a good thing. It will make you dread failure less.

* Some Saturday, when you really should be working, take the day off and explore whatever city you live in. Don't go to the standard tourist locations. Walk around all day and explore at random. Walk into businesses you might not otherwise walk into. Approach strangers and ask random questions. They'll probably think you're weird -- that's okay, you'll never see them again.

(This might not apply directly if your town is small and/or unsafe.)

* Find some off-campus activity to go and join for a day. The more ridiculous the better. Country line dancing?

* Take some class in some subject that really interests you, but will be useful for nothing. Shakespeare, music theory, some obscure foreign language, ... anything.

* Do reasonably well in your classes. But don't be afraid to get a few B's. Disappoint your family slightly, not totally.

* Read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Wonderfully insightful and funny, and based on what you say I imagine the story she tells will be familiar as hell.

* Tell all of this to your family. IMHO, you will be very, very glad you did so no matter how they react.

Good luck to you!

mikecane 12 years ago |

My advice is to go back to school. And not because you are being pressured to but because it will broaden you in ways you can't anticipate. You'll be in an environment that is unpredictable and stimulating and you don't know where future inspiration will come from because of it.

Jobs found inspiration after dropping out but -- and this is the important bit -- while still on the campus:

>>>“The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting,” he said. Among them was a calligraphy class that appealed to him after he saw posters on campus that were beautifully drawn. “I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”

-- from the Isaacson bio

Listen, you can always make money later. But you are young only once and if you pass up the chance for serendipity when you're young, you'll regret it later in life because by then you'll understand you've trapped yourself in a bubble for years.

I hope this helps.

bookreader 12 years ago | |

Thanks for the response. Several people have advised me to go back for the overall experience, but I feel like I'm not likely to enjoy it if I'm unhappy or depressed there.

I'm wondering how bad dropping out would be. I have about a year and a half of experience as an employed programmer, and I know several languages and frameworks.

Would the lack of a degree become a serious problem in the future?

_jss 12 years ago | | |

I entered the professional field after some minor community college experience right during the .com bubble (1997). It was very difficult to get my foot in any doors, largely due to the lack of a degree.

After 5 years of experience that went away, partly from the changes in the tech environment and also my experience.

It is competitive when you are starting out, but developers are high in demand. As someone now more in an employer role (which I'm not hiring now), I would look at Open Source work over a degree. If you have a github account with a maintained project or two, especially with a few stars, I'll think you are more qualified than if you have just a BS.

atsaloli 12 years ago | | |

Will your school allow an open ended leave of absence? I have been on such leave for eighteen years. It's good knowing I could come back.

anigbrowl 12 years ago |

I'm smart and dropped out, but regretted it later on both pragmatic and personal bases. Is there a possibility to switch schools, or live off-campus and avoid some of the social stuff? Also, consider taking some of your savings and chatting to a psychologist psychiatrist, one that relates to you as an adult individual instead of a student.

If you do drop out your parents will get over it, eventually, but being tagged as a failure is unpleasant in the short term and burdensome in the long term. At least come up with a plan B (for yourself, not for them) to finish your education on your own terms at your own pace. Also, have you considered the possibility that your vocation doesn't necessarily have to line up with your education? If you're doing well as a self-taught programmer and so forth, perhaps you'd be happier studying something quite different from whatever you started with - medieval history or astrobiology or philosophy, say.

foobarbazqux 12 years ago |

If you do decide to go back to school, I recommend taking advantage of the free and confidential counseling clinic that they almost certainly have. Don't tell your family about it unless you want to - it can be felt as a betrayal. See someone on a weekly basis to sort through what's going on. It just helps to talk, and counselors are trained to listen and empathize. Psychiatrists and other medical doctors are generally not trained like this, they will instead try to diagnose you with a disorder, so you might want to rely on them just for medication if you go that route. There's lots and lots of free high quality support on a university campus so don't be shy about taking advantage of it. On the other hand, if counseling or therapy in your hometown is an option for you if you drop out, that could help you figure things out too.

bookreader 12 years ago | |

Thanks for the advice. I think the depression would probably go away if I drop out (unless I can't find a programming job at all). I have contract work for the next year at least, so I'm not too worried.

If I go back, I'll definitely try out your suggestion of talking to counselor.

mathattack 12 years ago |

There is surface advice, which addresses the high level problem at hand. You got into an ivy league - make the most of it. Learn CS, math, philosophy and whatever else interests you.

Then there is the root problem, which is depression. There is no rational advice about "suck it up and go back to school" that will help here. Your problem is uniquely yours, but you are not the only one to feel it. It is a chemicals in the brain problem, not a willpower issue. Depression hits smart people more than dumb people. (Shouldn't it be the other way around?) If you can't go to your parents, do be aware that most Ivy League caliber schools do have strong support networks if you look around.

If you want to talk, create and post a dummy email address and I'll shoot you my contact info.

gyardley 12 years ago |

If it's not going to make you kill yourself, go back to school. In American society, a degree from an elite university is a skeleton key to opportunity. It's a clear signifier for 'upper-class' in a society that likes to pretend there's no such thing as class. They could teach you nothing except what wine goes with the fish for four years straight, and it'd still be worth the price of tuition.

I have a history degree from Stanford, and it's given me ridiculously unfair advantages in areas completely unrelated to history. I can't even imagine the easy mode my life would be set on if my degree was in something related to what I do for a living. Giving up that kind of advantage because you're temporarily depressed seems pretty foolish to me.

sejje 12 years ago |

My advice is to ignore thoughts about what you don't want to do.

Focus on thoughts about what you do want to do. Figure it out, what your idea of success is over the next 1-5 years (probably part of a plan of success for your lifetime). Measure success in your own terms, not those of your parents, peers, or anyone else.

Boil your 1-5 year down to some basic actions, and move to complete those actions.

It's not easy to ignore outside pressures, but I think it's important to make an attempt at being truly happy. Some people's measure of success might be to make their parents proud, and so they should follow a course that makes that happen.

_jss 12 years ago | |

If the idea of success over a year at a time is interesting, I recommend reading 18 Minutes by Peter Bregman. It's a very practical guide to this approach.

mswen 12 years ago |

Does your family know why you took a gap year despite good academic performance? If they don't know the reasons or only have a vague notion of why you took a year off, it might be good to have one of those honest vulnerable conversations and make sure they understand both the situational issues and how it has impacted you emotionally.

I am a parent with a 19 year old at university. Despite my ambitions that she proceed full speed ahead, I know that I value her mental health more than a speedy completion of studies. You might find your parents more understanding than you imagine if they know all the details.

mtdewcmu 12 years ago |

See if there's a way that you can hang on to some option to return and finish your degree, even if you are away for a few years. It sounds like you are not interested in going back right now, but it would be good to have the option if you ever change your mind.

Whatever you decide to do, keep your options open.

_jss 12 years ago |

Are you more motivated to conquer your depression or to sidestep the situation?

From an opportunity standpoint, this could be a chance to overcome a difficult personal challenge (depression) while also being able to do something many don't (go to university).

I hope that you find your answer.

bookreader 12 years ago | |

Thanks for the advice. I'm not sure if I want to try and conquer my depression right now, but I'm definitely thinking about the choice ahead.

_jss 12 years ago | | |

Oh, one more thing, spend an hour watching this: http://thisweekinstartups.com/thisweekin-startups/jerry-colo...

Jerry Colonna was at the top of the business world, partnered with Fred Wilson, and couldn't out run his depression. How he solved it isn't going to work for you, but he tells a wonderful story and really talks about what can be at the core of our desires.

rdouble 12 years ago |

Getting into an Ivy League program is pretty hard. Unless you're starting Microsoft or Facebook it seems like a wasted opportunity if you didn't follow through with it. It really opens up a lot of doors you wouldn't have without the degree, or even with a degree from a 2nd tier school.

dllthomas 12 years ago |

I don't have any advice that's not been said, but wanted to wish you luck whatever path you take.

bookreader 12 years ago | |

Thank you!