News-Letter

On Thursday, April 12, Hopkins' student-to-student peer listening group, A Place to Talk, hosted speaker Brandi Care, a survivor of suicide. Care had also visited Homewood Campus in March 2005.

Care miraculously survived a jump from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1998, and has since gone on to speak to groups to raise depression awareness among young adults, who often have depression creep up on them unnoticed. She has appeared on national television, on such programs as Oprah, Good Morning America and Dateline NBC.

It was during her junior year of high school when Care first became aware of her depression. Though she was a good student and was involved socially and in multiple extracurricular activities (having been class president, a swimming instructor and the captain of her school's field hockey team), she began feeling inexplicably despondent and unhappy with her life. Though she retained a happy appearance, there was a feeling of hopelessness she could not shake, thie first signs of what she later realized was depression.

This change went mostly unnoticed by her parents. They considered her sudden loss of interest in athletics and academics, and her new-formed habits of overeating and over-sleeping to be the result of stress and over-exertion. Unfortunately, Care did not realize she was suffering from clinical depression until after her suicide attempt.

It was the day of the Bay Bridge Walk in May 1998 that Care decided to try to take her own life. The famous Bay Bridge spans the Chesapeake, connecting Maryland's Eastern and Western shores, and is 186 feet above water at its highest point.

Though Care did not participate in the walk, her family did, and while they were gone for the day, she began to think jumping off the bridge would be a quick and painless method of suicide. Later that day, she drove to the bridge and threw herself into the bay.

Incredibly, Care survived the jump. Contrary to what she'd expected, she was not rendered unconscious from the impact, and her survival instinct made her fight to stay above the water. Luckily, a passing boat rescued her.

Following the attempt, Care was placed in a psychiatric facility where doctors diagnosed her with clinical depression. She had not realized the sadness she'd felt all year was the result of a disease. Paxil was prescribed for her, and she credits the medication with allowing her to think rationally, to better understand her true feelings and thoughts.

Care now believes her depression resulted from her personal over-extension in high school. She warns students against taking on more than they may be able to handle. Also, her mother suffered from depression, which put her at higher risk for the disease.

Care began her speech by showing footage of her Dateline piece. She then spoke frankly about her story and the reactions her family and friends had to the dramatic event. An open discussion followed where Care answered student questions, elaborated on her story and offered methods for dealing with and detecting depression. After the event, individual students approached her one-on-one for more personal advice.

Members of APTT consider Care's message to fit perfectly with their mission. Located in the AMR I lobby, APTT, an organization of undergraduates, trains its peer listeners to listen and respond to fellow students without giving advice. APTT strives to help students coping with depression or personal problems to explore their thoughts and feelings to reach their own conclusions.

"She's a powerful and inspiring woman," says APTT's current director, senior Michelle Samson.

"Depression is a big problem at Hopkins," says current public relations officer and future director Aaron Lazorwitz, a junior. "It tends to go unnoticed. At APTT, we're trying to make Hopkins a more supportive environment. It's like a big family away from home."

APTT is open from Sunday to Thursday, from 7 p.m. to midnight. All visits and phone calls to their AMR I office are confidential.

A week in the life of a modern college vagrant

It was as if I had become a phantom, silently roaming the grounds of the campus. After two full days of campus confinement, this was not the result that I had expected. It was a combination of sleep deprivation, lousy eating habits and displacement. A person needs a space to call his or her own, where private sanctuary can be found. When you're homeless, the lack of this fulfillment can be devastating to your morale.

My sense of time also slowly broke down as the days wore on. Wednesday blended into Thursday which blended into Friday. I was constantly tired. I napped every couple of hours. The rhythm of my standard eating schedule collapsed. I stopped feeling hunger. Friday I ate a small box of cereal, a dumpling, and nothing more.

I stumbled through campus wondering what, exactly, was the point of my project. I questioned my motives, and struggled to find some deeper avenue of meaning, some bigger picture to reveal just what exactly was the point of subjecting myself to a week on campus. To understand why students devote hours of their lives to sitting in tiny cubicles in the lower depths of our library? To achieve an in-depth grasp of the drive behind those all-nighters that hundreds of students pull every week? Was there some bolder, more dramatic statement about our culture, and the current state of the American College Student?

A sample conversation from when I informed people about my project:

Q: Are you an idiot?

A: Maybe. I'd like to imagine that I was striving for something much grander than what I achieved in the end.

Q: And what did you achieve in the end?

A: Unfortunately, it's hard to translate. What I experienced was a collage of time and images, small documents of the people, the conversations and the lives that frequent this campus. I was the fly on the wall, while also the boulder that rolls down the hill, if that makes any sense.

Q: It doesn't.

A: Sorry.

Q: So ... what about eating?

A: I tried to restrict myself to a budget, and see how far I could get on hand-outs. In the end I spent $22.43 in cash, and around five bucks in J-Cash. I bought little boxes of cereal from Blue Jay Caf8e and I ate a lot of pizza. Clubs tend to have pizza. I drank a lot of water from fountains.

Q: And hygiene?

A: I brushed my teeth and washed my face just like always. I took a shower on Tuesday and Thursday, in the locker rooms over at the Athletic Center. It was my first experience showering publicly. It was weird.

Q: So you slept mainly in the Hut?

A: Other than the HAC lab, the Hut is the only location open 24 hours to all students that I could turn to. I hear if you try to stay in Levering they won't kick you out, but I didn't get the chance to check that out. I wish I had slept outside when the weather was nice.

Q: Would you do it again?

A: No. I would recommend it, though, to those who can mentally handle it. I don't regret how the week transpired. I didn't explore the various nooks and crannies of the campus, I didn't befriend the janitorial and security staff and enter into their world, and I didn't even try out all the options available to me, like eating at Levering. In the end what I got was something much more personal via this unique test of my own abilities and resourcefulness. I attained, if not a complex epiphany to apply to others, a broader sense of peace.

As a senior, what it sort of brought was a feeling of closure to this small universe we call Hopkins. Whether we enjoy it or not, Hopkins is our home for four years. That's a lot of time for people at the brink of adulthood. Trying to live on campus for a week will lead some people to hate this place. Yet, we do all need to take the time to reflect upon our surroundings -- the people we see, the places we study and work and play -- we lend each of these our own importance. You should stop to appreciate our world here, at least once during your college career. That's the most practical thing I can tell you.

Also the water fountain in the Hut kicks ass.

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