RobinsonFaithA
Apr 23, 2017
Undergraduate / Including mental and autoimmune illnesses, stress, and psychological abuse, etc in Common App essay? [3]
@Holt
Thank you. I want to use the QuestBridge application this fall to re-apply to many of them and re-apply for Harvard through the Common Application. Unfortunately, there was no way I could've controlled the information, not with everything I was under. I didn't have anyone to help me. No guidance counselor, no parent who can help, nobody. Even if I did, I was out of my mind, quite literally... I'm afraid to mention it, because it seems like even if I explain what I'm going through to people, none of them understand it. It's like I'm talking to a wall. People look or (don't) listen to me and think I'm not so sick, so why couldn't I have just done XYZ? That's what I told one of my doctors after I was diagnosed. She told me to get a job so I could pay for her services not covered by insurance like it was the easiest thing to do. Months of sleep deprivation, non-restorative sleep, bodily damage, etc.. do things to a person that "normal" people never have gone through :/. None of the schools ask if I've applied before, I believe, so I'm still not sure if I should even mention it. If accepted, I could talk to the professors myself. If I have a relapse of the illness, I may not be able to control it and suffer the same fate as I did this time. That's why this happened. I thought including the information here would be good because this is what they'll find if I even mention I got Lupus and they looked it up, and I didn't know who here would know what either Fibromyalgia or Lupus is. Most people in the U.S. and UK don't. Anyway, this information is practically on the first page results on Google, but it's scattered through many websites, so I thought I'd summarize which of it applies to me because it could really hurt if they think anything beyond "Huh, what's Lupus? Whatever: next!". For example, Raynaud's is bad because the schools I applied to are in the North, which means cold weather could cause my blood vessels to spasm and start my tissues decaying. I guess I wrote some of the other stuff because I haven't told anyone the full extent of the stuff I did. I can't talk to anyone in real life about it because I'm so ashamed that I had no control, I literally can't talk about it. It hurts too much.
Edit: Do you also have advice for whether I should mention the stress I was under, and the psychological abuse + illness' effects had on my courses and extracurriculars? There's a lot of intertwining issues that addressing the issues alone wouldn't wholly address because the timeline wouldn't end up.
@Holt
Thank you. I want to use the QuestBridge application this fall to re-apply to many of them and re-apply for Harvard through the Common Application. Unfortunately, there was no way I could've controlled the information, not with everything I was under. I didn't have anyone to help me. No guidance counselor, no parent who can help, nobody. Even if I did, I was out of my mind, quite literally... I'm afraid to mention it, because it seems like even if I explain what I'm going through to people, none of them understand it. It's like I'm talking to a wall. People look or (don't) listen to me and think I'm not so sick, so why couldn't I have just done XYZ? That's what I told one of my doctors after I was diagnosed. She told me to get a job so I could pay for her services not covered by insurance like it was the easiest thing to do. Months of sleep deprivation, non-restorative sleep, bodily damage, etc.. do things to a person that "normal" people never have gone through :/. None of the schools ask if I've applied before, I believe, so I'm still not sure if I should even mention it. If accepted, I could talk to the professors myself. If I have a relapse of the illness, I may not be able to control it and suffer the same fate as I did this time. That's why this happened. I thought including the information here would be good because this is what they'll find if I even mention I got Lupus and they looked it up, and I didn't know who here would know what either Fibromyalgia or Lupus is. Most people in the U.S. and UK don't. Anyway, this information is practically on the first page results on Google, but it's scattered through many websites, so I thought I'd summarize which of it applies to me because it could really hurt if they think anything beyond "Huh, what's Lupus? Whatever: next!". For example, Raynaud's is bad because the schools I applied to are in the North, which means cold weather could cause my blood vessels to spasm and start my tissues decaying. I guess I wrote some of the other stuff because I haven't told anyone the full extent of the stuff I did. I can't talk to anyone in real life about it because I'm so ashamed that I had no control, I literally can't talk about it. It hurts too much.
Edit: Do you also have advice for whether I should mention the stress I was under, and the psychological abuse + illness' effects had on my courses and extracurriculars? There's a lot of intertwining issues that addressing the issues alone wouldn't wholly address because the timeline wouldn't end up.