WARNING before you send your child to an upper Midwest cold weather college

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This below was just published by a Michigan statewide outlet. The freezing weather and sunless skies cause acute seasonal depression. Students are on campus from September to April. The weather in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio is truly miserable and at its worst when kids are on campus. How bad it is?

How dreary is Michigan? Only 5 minutes of sunshine this month

Welcome to another dreary day in Michigan. The skies are overcast. The snow-covered ground matches the blah, boringly hazy color of the sky.

Is it morning or afternoon? Who can even tell?

Much of Michigan has gotten minimal daily sunshine recently, but we hadn’t realized how far down the sun tally we’d fallen until the National Weather Service reminded us with a dim little factoid they posted on social media late yesterday.

Brace yourself:

“In the first 5 days of January, we have recorded 5 minutes of sunshine in southeast Grand Rapids. Our last half-sunny day was December 28. Our last mostly sunny day? A month ago, December 4.”

https://www.mlive.com/news/2023/01/how-dreary-is-michigan-grand-rapids-has-had-5-minutes-of-sunshine-this-month.html

I have SAD and went to college in the midwest. I spent more time outside going to/from class and had fewer problems in college than I do with an indoor desk job. The latitude for Columbus Ohio (where OSU is) and Rockville, MD are less than one degree apart. Bloomington IN (where Indiana Univ. is located) is almost the same as Rockville. Michigan and Wisconsin are further north, but like you said, they can use lights if it's an issue. I think the cold adds to the problem only because people stay indoors. If you want to avoid SAD symptoms in the winter, look much further South to Florida, Arizona, Texas, etc.

[Anonymous]

Winter is pretty.

[Anonymous]

In other news.. Scientists have discovered that the entire eskimo population, driven by depression, committed suicide. Sunshine of under 5 minutes this month seems to have been the reason.. The only survivor seems to have gone mad and was found wandering around singing "I'm the only gay eskimo..".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I live in Chicago and can attest that it absolutely has been a grey, dreary winter. Very little snow outside of one dramatic snowstorm.

But, I also think making college decisions based on the weather is ridiculous.

Taking your mental health seriously is not ridiculous. The upper Midwest is a depressing sunless place, especially during the school year.

+1
A friend from high school dumped U of M for Arizona State. In December he was hanging out with a bunch of cheerleaders at the pool while the slugs in Michigan were stomping through 3 feet of snow. Poor guy was stuck in investment banking for 15 yrs because of his lightweight degree.

Three feet of snow? You realize that’s what 36” amounts to. Hyperbole does not lend to authenticity. In other words, I don’t believe your posting. Even so, ASU is not considered one of the better public schools in this country. #56 at USNWR. That’s the public school ranking. #121 overall. Not impressed. Sorry.

Sorry to burst your bubble but nobody values a Michigan or Indiana or Ohio State BA more than an Arizona State, Ole Miss or Florida BA. They’re all just large public degree mills. It’s a box checking degree. You don’t get any extra headhunters calling you because you were depressed and frostbitten in south Chicago or podunk West Lafayette or Ann Arbor for 4 yrs.

The British government does:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/05/31/britain-opens-up-its-visas-for-graduates-of-worlds-top-universities/?sh=7cfa93a327fc

“ To be eligible for HPI visas, graduates must have been awarded their degrees from an eligible university, which is being defined as an institution that has appeared on two of these three global ranking systems: The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, and/or The Academy of Ranking World Universities.

Of the 37 eligible universities included on the most recent list, 20 are in the United States. They are: the California Institute of Technology; Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Stanford University, Yale University, three campuses of the University of California (at Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego), University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin and University of Washington.”

Look, no Arizona State! Your uniformed opinion has been noted. Nobody takes your comments seriously, except yourself. I’m sure you’ve responded to many of your own ridiculous postings in this discussion alone.

The list of US universities has been expanded to 21 to now include the Big Ten's University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In other news.. Scientists have discovered that the entire eskimo population, driven by depression, committed suicide. Sunshine of under 5 minutes this month seems to have been the reason.. The only survivor seems to have gone mad and was found wandering around singing "I'm the only gay eskimo..".

That is a tragedy of epic proportions. How bout the rest of the population in Alaska, Norway, Sweden, Canada etc.? Are they good or did their white privilege save them?

[Anonymous]

I think OP is vastly overstating the case, but as a resident of Indiana, the last couple of weeks has been absolutely dismal in terms of sunlight. Today has been colder, but at least the sun is out!

[Anonymous]

I went to school in the early 90’s in Ithaca NY that is notoriously gray, cold and windy. I didn’t love the weather but got used to it and dragged myself to class even when I thought I couldn’t take it any more. If I would have had internet and Netflix, I could see myself missing more classes. It’s just harder to get out of bed each day when it’s cold and gray.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In other news.. Scientists have discovered that the entire eskimo population, driven by depression, committed suicide. Sunshine of under 5 minutes this month seems to have been the reason.. The only survivor seems to have gone mad and was found wandering around singing "I'm the only gay eskimo..".

You are showing your ignorance and are actually making OP’s point. The indigenous people of the Arctic, such as the Inuit and Yupik (“Eskimo” is a meaningless Anglo term, that is now considered to be offensive) have very, very high suicide rates. Alcoholism is a huge problem, and many villages & towns in Alaska prohibit or limit the sale of alcohol for this reason.

It wouldn’t be a good comparison, anyway. Arctic natives have genetic adaptations to living in the Arctic that allow them to synthesize vitamins D & C from their traditional diet. In older times, Arctic natives would often virtually “hibernate” through the darkest coldest days of winter. Modern Arctic natives who do not live on a traditional subsistence diet have much higher incidence of health issues than those that do, because they need the fatty seafood to synthesize the vitamins they need to live in the dark. So, unless your college kid has a lot of Arctic Native in their family tree and they want to subsist on whale blubber — and even if they do — I would take into account the impact of winter on their physical and mental health.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think OP is vastly overstating the case, but as a resident of Indiana, the last couple of weeks has been absolutely dismal in terms of sunlight. Today has been colder, but at least the sun is out!

It's East Coast bias against "fly-over" states. There's a vast difference between Indiana and Minnesota. The weather in Maryland has been dreary recently too.

[Anonymous]

This morning was thirty degrees outside. OP: I appreciate the warning & will heed your advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to new UNC research…

2022’s fastest growing major cities are on the coasts, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.

The most dying cities include the northern Rust Belt’s Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Cleveland.

https://kenaninstitute.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/american-growth-project-10172022r.pdf

What schools in this conversation are in Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo, or Cleveland?

Those are the biggest cities in the upper Midwest. They’re all dying because they’re crummy places to live. If you’re an UMC teen, why go to college in a region that’s cold and dying? Please distill the point? There is no point. You’re just biased because you’re from there or stuck there.

Only 1/2 of the cities you listed above are in the “upper Midwest,” which typically only includes Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Buffalo is in New York which is the northeast not the Midwest. Cleveland is in ohio which is not the upper Midwest. None of the colleges mentioned in this thread so far are in Detroit or milwaukee. UW-Madison is very cold but it’s often sunny so not necessarily terribly depressing and Madison is not a dying city, it has a vibrant college town vibe. Same for Ann Arbor. Other major cities in the “upper Midwest” include Minneapolis/St. Paul, which is consistently ranked a great place to live and not a dying city whatsoever.

[Anonymous]

Buffalo was great. I can’t imagine longer winters or more snow but we had fun in the college years - kids walk around in shorts, walk to the bars in the snow, etc it is part of the experience.

[Anonymous]

Colby will have a high of 2 and a low of -20 on Saturday- before the windchill, which will drop it to -40

[Anonymous]

My kid at Notre Dame is doing great!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In other news.. Scientists have discovered that the entire eskimo population, driven by depression, committed suicide. Sunshine of under 5 minutes this month seems to have been the reason.. The only survivor seems to have gone mad and was found wandering around singing "I'm the only gay eskimo..".

The suicide epidemic in the Inuit community is a complicated, heartbreaking issue. Suicidal was virtually nonexistent until modern times so the cause is much more likely something else than lack of sun. Most of the population knows someone who committed suicide. Is that really what you want to joke about?