File this under "B", for "Boo Fucking Hoo"

[Josquius]

I think growing up means you do what you want to do, epecially if you are burned out.

fyp

Say, you have a child, you have a pet, you have a job, you have signed contracts.  Do you just say, oh I am burned out, so I don't want to take care of my child, or my dog, I don't want to go to work this week, I want to forget my mortgage?  That's what children do.  Adults take responsibility and do what they have to do, even if deep down they don't want to do it. 

Happened to a guy in his 50s at my work.
The company let him take a few months of leave and then he returned.
It happens.
As society becomes more complex and demanding one moves further up the hierarchy of needs. It's simple psychology . It's what drives humans forwards

I am not sure about that.

My grandparents generation did back-breaking farming work from dawn to dusk, dealt with all kinds of political shit as time went on, and raised kids and helped raised grandkids.
I don't think our generation has it any more complex. There are more OPTIONS which makes it harder to feel like you are doing the optimum, I guess.

When you're a turnip farmer working dawn to dusk for a few scheckles a day you don't have many options open to you. Your dreams and priorities are pretty low.

A well educated 21st century white collar person..... the world is your oyster. The tyranny of choice is overpowering.
Your body may be atrophying but your brain has too much time to think.

[The Larch]

This story seems quite weird, I don't know how much is not being told. The girl's reaction was strange and obviously not very considered to those around her, but if what it says about her background is true (raised by a single mom, sent to a boarding school, overachiever, would only communicate with her mother twice per month...) I can see how that girl would be stressed/bummed/burned out. Her environment doesn't exactly seem to be the most nurturing one, and once she started having trouble with her life I can easily understand that the situation would spiral into a bad place.

I mostly agree with you, except I don't think the story is weird at all.  As someone else pointed the story of freshmen not adapting well to all the pressures of university for a whole range of reasons is well known.  It is also very common for kids in distress to try to avoid telling their parents about it.  Especially in circumstances like this.  Added to the pressures that all students face in their first year, this kid had to face the pressure of living up to all the expectations.   Berkut wishes he had her problems.  I don't think he has any idea what she went through or what it is like to be stressed to the point of just dropping out.  To add to the problem it sure seems from the few comments about her mother in the article that she was completely incapable of giving the kind of advice and support that would have helped her daughter.   

A lot of universities now recognize that proactive action is required and systems are being put in place to detect students in distress early on so that counselling services can be made available.  If identified early enough there is much that can be done to help them through the tough patches.

Sorry if I was not clear enough, the part of the story that I find weird is the whole "erasing my past self" thing, and going incommunicated from almost everybody she knew. The burnout part is perfectly understandable and not weird at all.

[Valmy]

Kids are basically the same as ever. Everybody said the same shit about my generation. We were slackers who never wanted to do shit and were entitled. Every new generation is entitled and does not want to work...because we were just kids a few years before when we got shit and didn't have to work.

No.  Work is measurable.  Kids today are working less (or "differently") than previous generations.  Whether that is good or bad can be debated.

Back in my day we measured work with an old stick we found in the barn.

[Valmy]

Sorry if I was not clear enough, the part of the story that I find weird is the whole "erasing my past self" thing, and going incommunicated from almost everybody she knew. The burnout part is perfectly understandable and not weird at all.

Yeah I think that is pretty common feeling at that age. I sure felt it.

[Oexmelin]

Yeah. Oex's post was indication of this: Colleges were special places of self-growth and socialisation in my time, they are soulless makers of money-earners now!

I do not think my view is colored essentially by some kind of "Universities these days" nostalgia. Unlike many people, I have spent a lot more time in Universities than four years to get a BA, and I could see things change from my time as a student, a grad student, a postdoc and a prof. I think the transformation of many universities into hedge funds with a college attached has had profound repercussions for the organization of colleges themselves - in the ways they generate "units" and "bureaus" that are not terribly connected to teaching, but are rather creating more things to administrate. That universities are more corporate spaces now than they were even when I enlisted appears to me self-evident. That I find it abhorrent is only the reflection of my politics, which you may disagree with, and therefore quite simply turn it a positive.

Of course, colleges will always be places of socialization - if only by virtue of having a large concentration of young people around. To some extent, the whole discourse about them having to be places of socialization also means there will be some measures in place to "facilitate" it. In the 19th century, it was a place of socialization for a particular class of people, who found each other there and peripherally attended courses that taught what an educated person was expected to know. It was not about self-growth: it was about growth, period. Preparing your entry into the upper-middle class world.

The current disappointment, I think, stems from the historically narrow time period when universities had to frantically cope with the massification of attendance, often far from your parent's place (it didn't use to be this way) that came with a climate where universities were places where you got exposed to ideas, and lifestyle, you had not encountered before. College spelled a certain form of freedom. The passage of time, and a certain pop culture (i.e., movies about the college experience, which are either about partying, about awesome teachers bestowing an epiphany upon avid students) has magnified this aura of the university, much beyond what was probably a much less amazing experience for most people. Yet, I think if you came looking for quirky, for strange, for different, for some form of meaning - it was possible to find it, and to nurture it.   

For a variety of reasons, which include I think the sheer connectedness of the world, this is less the case now. There is much less unexpected, and the corporatization means that the forms that universities take are quite recognizable to suburban kids. Yet many still keep this idea that there is going to be something - some meaning, some life-altering, life-defining moment. 

[derspiess]

Wtf is a "social learner"? A moran?

That annoying person who wants to do way more study groups than everyone else needs.

[The Brain]

Wtf is a "social learner"? A moran?

That annoying person who wants to do way more study groups than everyone else needs.

They're a social disease.

[Admiral Yi]

What do you mean by corporatization Uks?

[Valmy]

Having spent an absurd amount of time on a college campus myself I can certainly say the romance of the college experience does not really match the reality.

[Oexmelin]

What do you mean by corporatization Uks?

It's a longer post for later.

[derspiess]

Having spent an absurd amount of time on a college campus myself I can certainly say the romance of the college experience does not really match the reality.

For me it way exceeded expectations.

[Valmy]

Having spent an absurd amount of time on a college campus myself I can certainly say the romance of the college experience does not really match the reality.

For me it way exceeded expectations.

Did you: find yourself?

[derspiess]

Having spent an absurd amount of time on a college campus myself I can certainly say the romance of the college experience does not really match the reality.

For me it way exceeded expectations.

Did you: find yourself?

Yes.  Also found beer & chicks.

[The Brain]

Wanting?

[garbon]

Wanting?

Needing,