Yesterday evening, after most of us spent a day off from classes doing nothing, our entire community was filled with terrible news: one of our dear classmates and fellow Yalies had taken her own life due to depression. I never personally knew her, but it undoubtedly affected everyone on this campus, from medical and divinity students to the university president to freshman living on Old Campus.

Yesterday afternoon my roommate got a text from the guy who used to be her Freshman Counselor (Yale's version of an R.A.) last year saying that the girl, Luchang Wang, had posted a goodbye note on social media and she was nowhere to be found. Everyone from friends, random students to policemen searched all of campus and the entire area to try and find her before it was too late, only for the California highway patrol to get in contact with Yale Police and let them know she had taken a flight to California and had already ended her life.

Honestly, the entire community is pretty rattled. Here at Yale, all of us pretend stress isn't an issue, much like students do all across the nation. It becomes an incredibly dangerous environment to keep up with incredibly rigorous academics, extra-curricular activities, jobs, and everything else in between, along with the immeasurable stress of simply being away from home while pretending everything is perfect. People who are no longer in college (like parents) often make the arrogant, asinine, and incorrect statement that young people don't have stress. Most times, the conversation goes like this:

"Yeah, I'm really stressed about everything right now with work, classes, and just life."
"Oh, you college students think you know stress. Just wait until you've got a job and a family and bills to pay...you'll realize this was great. If you think this is stressful, wait until your job is on the line."

I truly believe that responses like that are what drive people, especially young people like students, to feel inferior and it forces them to turn inwards with their stress and depression. And depression gets worse when you feel you have nobody to turn to. People, but more specifically parents, need to realize that the majority of children/teens aren't going to just come right out and say "I'm depressed and I need help." Most young people will try and test the waters to see if they can open up and talk to parents, friends, etc. So when a kid calls and says he/she is stressed, it could mean much more potentially.

Who knows how many times Luchang or other students who took their own lives made that phone call back home, only to get told "That stress is nothing compared to the real world."

Isn't that sad to think about?

And the deeply saddening death of Luchang isn't the first suicidal event here at Yale or in the Ivy League. A simply search online will show the depth and breadth of this issue. Just last week, another freshman here on campus attempted ( but failed) to take his own life by jumping out of an upper-story window on Old Campus.

Make no mistake, college is incredibly stressful. Some students cope by exercising, some cope by drinking, some cope by studying, and some can't cope.

As I heard the news that Luchang was missing Tuesday afternoon, I at first was saddened but didn't feel much. A few minutes later, I put myself in the position of one of her suitemates - I imagined what it would be like if one of my roommates posted a goodbye note and disappeared. It was a terribly gut-wrenching feeling.

I would argue that most people experience depression sometime in their life. I have, and I'll be honest - it is a sickness. It's terrible to feel so deeply sad to the point that you want to do nothing with other people. Luckily, I found a coping mechanism pretty quickly, and took my mind off of the depression by studying for hours on end. This was in high school, and it just so happened to be an incredibly beneficial and productive coping mechanism since I taught myself how to study and subsequently got into Yale. However, I can't imagine being depressed and not being able to find something to take your mind off of it.

I suppose I'm writing all of this just to make a point that depression is real, and to remember a girl who I undoubtedly was in the same lectures with, ate the same meals with, yet never was afforded the chance to befriend.

This past weekend my fiancèe and a friend visited me up here at Yale, and we ended up going around for the weekend. We had a great time going around New York City and some small New England towns in Connecticut. 

This one is of us all on the end of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was raining miserably.

Typical tired, yawning me on a subway with Tiff.

And I can't leave out the old-timey green post boxes in NYC.

I finally got to see the Flatiron Building.

We went into the Lego Store, and they had a huge, lego Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, so I decided to take a "cool" selfie with the lego Gandalf,

Inside the original Macy's they have old wooden escalators, complete with the wooden stairs.

And this may be my favorite picture of the weekend. This is us four on the top of East Rock Park, a cliff that overlooks the City of New Haven. If you know what you're looking at, you can easily spot most of Yale's campus, along with the port of New Haven and the rest of the City. It really is a wonderful view from the top of East Rock. 

I also had my first day working at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library today, and it was really amazing. As someone who loves history, this is pretty much a dream job. There isn't a more thorough rare materials library in the nation, and many even argue that this is the most thorough and expansive rare book and manuscript library in the world. Here's just a few of the things I worked with today:

This is a 16th century genealogy of a French nobility family.

 These are tickets and invitations to meet Mussolini in 1937 in Tripoli, Libya at his inauguration when he was inaugurated as Governor General of Libya.

Any student of U.S. History or Government will know who this person is: Alexis de Toqueville...possibly the most famous writer on early American democracy. I worked with much of his handwritten letter collection today.

 This is an indentured apprenticeship contract from the mid-1500s in England.

This is an indentured servant contract for a girl named Ann Smith in the 1700s.

This is a vellum-bound book on religious topics.

This is probably the coolest thing I've seen at the Beinecke because of its modern day validity. This is a bond for a Dutch dike-maintenance company in the 1700s. It just so happens that this is still a live bond, so it has to travel back to the Netherlands every 10 years for interest to be collected. Can you believe this old document still collects Euros to this day!?

 This is also really cool... it's a royal decree from Queen Mary and King Phillip of England in the 1500s.

And it was only my first day. Among other things, I also handled part of our expansive ancient papyrus collection, which is thousands of 3rd century BC documents written in languages like Aramaic on papyrus.