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Petition Letter: Honestly, this semester has been completely brutal for me. I was doing okay very early on in the semester. I'm a residence life don, and the loneliness sort of started to set in a tiny bit. I started feeling depressed, but nothing major early on. I wasn't the student I normally am, but I endured.
Early on in the semester one of my childhood best friends died by suicide - I'm someone who's generally pretty good at coping with things. I come from a small town and this is an unfortunate trend with people I grew up with. I figured I would be sad, but manage to get over it with some accommodation and still be a good student. I dropped one class to deal with the fact that I was going through a hard time, but figured I'd get over it. But I didn't. It took a huge toll on me for 2 months I didn't attend any classes, and just sort of refused to admit to myself that I dropped the ball. I wanted to believe that I could get out on the other end and still ace my classes, but that is obviously impossible. I rarely left my room, talked to anyone and mostly ate garbage food every day unable to sleep. Frequently I would wake up at like 9pm and then stay up all night. Hard to be a proactive student when you can't sleep. I've never had such poor mental health in my entire life. I was struggling with (in my opinion, but I didn't go to a hospital) depression, or at least was burdened to a level where I struggled to find any motivation in anything. By the time I admitted to myself that I couldn't fix it (deadlines missed, etc), it was far too late to drop classes. I wasn't sure how to do it, and I guess part of me figured I didn't want to admit defeat. I dropped the ball early on. I missed a few deadlines and I didn't think I could recover so I sort of threw in the towel. Not particularly motivating or heroic but I just kind of cracked under the pressure. I really didn't take any healthy steps to getting into a better mental health position. I talked to friends a lot, but nothing professional. I'm not genuinely sure how I even get a counselor - one of my profs sent me here.