People want trigger warnings and I understand the need to protect against one's triggers. However we also have an epidemic of silence in our country. But if you're someone who just doesn't think about these issues and wants to always 'feel safe' (i.e. ignorance is bliss types) my work may not be for you.
Trigger warning: I'm discussing some details in this post. Please stop reading if this is upsetting beyond your capacity to self regulate.
If you feel defensive towards these colleges and tend to blame individuals, please remember these are very young lives we're seeing gone. The age range is 17 to 30. Can you imagine how much pressure is building up for them already to die by self-harm?
Often when suicide happens on college campuses, people tend to cope by saying they're strong and that the individual who died was not able to cope with pressure.
But how do you justify this when this is happening once per month?
Clearly, something is drastically wrong in this environment. If so many students are choosing to end their lives at one of India's premiere institutions, what does it say about our educational system?
New India needs us to learn how to create healthy educational environments which don’t applaud toxic competition but rather help students, staff and faculty blossom in the unique gifts they bring to the world.
My experiences with my friends etc., who studied at the IITs and IIMs and so on, is that a lot of people normalize or even celebrate graduating in a dissociated state. And they carry these traits into the workforce.
Dissociation means just “getting through” the day, the month, or the semester. Forgetting to eat, sleep, shower, date, or not being attuned to anything other than your one and only goal for a period of years!
They first struggle to get in, then struggle to get out, with the whole country’s and family’s aspirations riding on their shoulders.
By the time they “survive” these environments, they feel they’ve earned this arrogance of being from these schools, and many tend to take on the same toxic traits of their educational institutions, which makes them hard to be around or to be authentic as human beings.
This is why some graduates with some groundedness quit the rat race immediately after achieving some financial stability. It’s the only way to not become completely unstable as a person.
I’m so sorry! Our people deserve better.
