“Everyone breaks down alone, but it’s weak to break down in front of other people.”
At the time, I was sitting at a table in Baxter with a close group of my friends around midnight. We had spent the evening fooling around, eating mozzarella sticks, and bemoaning our ever-increasing workloads. As I munched on a nacho, my friends and I started to reminisce about our summer experiences. While joking about long assignments and high anxiety, someone brought up the Summer Science Program (SSP), our shared five-week adventure in sampling a taste of the course load at Williams.
While sitting at the table, I listened as my friends recounted their experiences from SSP. They described how often they struggled, how often they stressed out, and even, how often they broke down.
Stunned, I spoke up: “I didn’t know everyone was feeling that – I thought everyone was happy in SSP. You all seemed so happy. I thought I was the only one breaking down.”
Looking me right in the eye, one of my friends explained that everyone was breaking down, just not in front of other people. Everyone simply kept it to themselves. “We all broke down – it’s just that no one goes around breaking down in public.”
Sitting there, I was at a total loss for words. During the summer program, there were days when I would find a bathroom in the South Science Center, lock the door, and cry for twenty minutes straight. There were mornings when I had to watch my words because if my voice cracked, I feared that I would break down in front of someone. There were nights when I shoved my face into my pillow, so that my roommate could not hear me crying.
Throughout the summer, I struggled, and I broke down multiple times, but I never saw my friends doing the same. To my face, my friends put on a smile, masking their true emotions. They never talked about their struggles. They never struggled. They never admitted to breaking down. They never broke down. I never saw anyone else who broke down, and I did not want to be the only one who was, so I did what everyone else did. I put on a brave face.
In Baxter that night, hearing that my friends struggled as I struggled opened my eyes. We all struggled. If I had known during the summer that everyone was struggling, I would have felt less alone. I would have realized that everyone at Williams is struggling, but they only do so in private – making everyone feel more alone and making everyone feel like they are the only ones struggling.
My friends and I have broken the mold. We are now strong enough to sit around and laugh about our struggles. We are now strong enough to talk to each other about breaking down over English essays and chemistry midterms. We are now strong enough to build a community in which we do not have to put a smiling face on, while needing a shoulder to cry on. And I think that Williams would be a much better place, if it learned to do the same.