Reply to $80k In Debt Worth It for Ivy Undergrad?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Also, I'm not sure if you're cut off from Colombia's resources, but absolutely see if they have a career counselor willing to talk to you. They can sit down and discuss how this affects your future with better insight than the folks here. And they've seen students in your position, and genuinely want the best for you.

Just recently I met with my grad advisor. I wanted to find an easy summer class to knock out that could be lowkey enough to not kill me during my current work crunch. Figured out I could take a class and save a couple grand and finish a semester early if I just packed it in tighter. He begged me to reconsider. Said he's seen more and more students coming back for second degrees as students have been going that route. [b]They get burned out and get nothing but the diploma. School is really what you make of it, and you need to get something besides the paper.[/b]

I'm taking his advice and have taken the summer to leisurely research and plan my thesis before I need to get started in force. It's honestly been really nice, and has made me way more excited to work on it than I otherwise would be.[/quote]

OP here. I agree with you, but the posters here seem to disagree. Idk, it seems like everyone here is saying that it doesn't matter if I graduate from Columbia burnt out and with nothing really worthy of note at graduation (connections to peers, professors, meaningful research or extracurricular experiences, etc.). They all seem to be saying that as long as I get a Columbia diploma, it'll give me a leg up in the job market forever -- even though I am super burnt out from school and also don't feel like I'm getting anything out of Columbia (connections to peers, professors, meaningful research or extracurricular experiences, etc.). I've been rejected from almost every single student club and research position I've applied to, I have no close friends, and my professors mostly tolerate me as a warm body in their class. [/quote]

Don’t feel bad about not getting into clubs or finding research internships. Columbia is a tough place. My son is there. He has been rejected from every single club. Has not been able to find any sort of lab internship either. And he said the competition of trying to interview for top finance firms and investment banks is crazy.[b] It is a sink and swim environment which gets him down sometimes. [/b]But he likes most of his classes although a few have been brutal. And he likes NYC. There is more to the school than the crazy competitive kids but it can do a number on your self confidence [/quote]

OP here. You're right, and the competitive, cutthroat, sink-or-swim environment is probably contributing to my depression. I don't even like Manhattan, [i][b]so it feels like there's nothing really worthwhile left for me at the school. 
[/b][/i]
And it's not like the competitive, cutthroat nature of Columbia caught me off guard or I'm anyhow unfamiliar with it -- my entire life has been a miserable series of intense, cutthroat competition driven by my parents' desires to brag to their friends about my academic achievement. I was (and am) super burnt out from high school. My parents made it clear to me that their sense of self -- as well as their entire purpose for immigrating across the world -- is based on my academic performance, which college I go to, which major I declare, and how much money I make in my chosen career.

My mom is CONSTANTLY telling me how "so-and-so's daughter works at McKinsey now and just bought her parents $300 worth of gifts -- I hope you do that when you graduate!" All the immigrant parents from our Asian ethnicity fawned over my parents when I got into Columbia, and they LOVED having that extra attention and social status. When these same parents stopped fawning over them because my parents (unfortunately) had to break it to them that I was in a useless humanities major, many of these people made fun of my parents and stopped socializing with them. My mom screamed at me that half of her friends stopped talking to her because they know I won't be financially successful as a useless English major, and she blamed her social downfall among the Asian immigrant community in our area entirely on me.

I thought I would get a break from the relentless sense of competition, perfection, excellence, and miserable grind of high school in college, but Columbia is the embodiment of all of these things. The stress culture here is really high, and I don't vibe with the student body at all. I was rejected from all two dozen plus clubs I applied to (even relatively random clubs are selective at Columbia), and I have no close group of friends at school (hard to do that when every club rejects you and Columbia is so dispersed with no real sense of community).

I'm really lonely and miserable at school, and it feels impossible to reach my peers (whose competitive, intense, and elitist nature makes it hard to create long-lasting connections). When I heard Tess Majors was murdered in Morningside Park, I got pretty jealous. Why wasn't I the one who was murdered? I'd get a permanent break from the misery of my life.

To act out my passively suicidal wishes, I would go into Morningside Park alone when I had depressive episodes at night. But unfortunately no one bothered to murder me...

It will never get better. My life will always be miserable and I'll never be able to get off the rat race if I take out $80k in loans. There's no happy end in sight. Taking out $80k in loans means that I'll have to work some miserable corporate job in an intense environment so I can pay off the principle and not just be stuck paying off interest for the rest of my life. [/quote]

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