10 What I Learned from Raising Hell – Luise Wolf

“Welcome to Hell,” he said. The lab instructor for the analytical chemistry course could not have picked a more discouraging and accurate introduction. It was 2010, my first semester of the infamous Chemical Biology specialization, and the twenty of us in the third ever cohort of the program had just realized the magnitude of what we’d signed up for.

The first year, once we’d survived it, was only the beginning. I never managed a full course load again, dropping classes every semester to cope with a health crisis. It made me terribly insecure and it was easy to believe I was the only one who had failed to adapt. After a while, I realized everyone had been affected in their own way. Not sleeping. Not eating. Not having relationships, or having toxic ones. Drinking, always drinking. Some left the program entirely. The fifteen of us who stayed came to rely on and support each other, and we saw the hurt more clearly. Our regular complaining became a strong undercurrent. We’d stopped expecting things to get better and we’d gotten angry.

In my fourth year, I had a breakdown so severe I dropped my thesis and stayed for a week at a half-way house. The students who weren’t in the co-operative program [employment mixed with academic studies] graduated and our close-knit group was split in half. With one year left, it seemed there was nothing left to lose. Those of us who remained decided enough was enough. We wanted change.

When you’re hurt, it’s hard to know what will heal it. We knew what wasn’t working: the collective silence and lack of awareness or understanding. We wanted recognition and we wanted to be heard. Looking back, I think we wanted validation and comfort, perhaps closure. And even though we couldn’t explain exactly what this was, we wanted no one to ever have to go through it again.

I contacted an instructor about creating an event where we could talk about what the students were going through—a forum, of sorts. Soon I was getting responses from the instructor regarding a “Mental Health Inreach Event”. Talks that began with the two of us, the instructor and myself, soon grew to include campus services, but discussion was often centred around specifics: in what actionable ways could the department be better? How would this “student-led initiative” develop solutions?

The focus on tangible, trackable results was frustrating in a way I didn’t have the vocabulary for at the time. We knew little about mental wellness or self-care: there was no departmental precedent. I was one of few of my peers with any real activism experience, thanks to the Feminist Alliance McMaster (FAM). I was also sleep-deprived, lacking hope or inspiration, and intimidated by the responsibility of advocating for a student body whose needs they didn’t have the language to communicate to me. How could I explain to professors in a meaningful way that the same reward system that was breaking us down was the very reason we were here in the first place? That everything we did for our classes was “despite”—despite fatigue, despite depression and anxiety, despite a very real desire to quit and pursue something we might actually enjoy? And why wasn’t it enough to say that and be heard?

Planning dragged on into another semester, and after another delayed response, I sent this scathingly polite reminder to the instructor:

The importance we place on a Mental Health Inreach event is evident in that we’re willing to organize time and effort for something that will mostly benefit a younger cohort of students. While we hope to enjoy the evening and learn a lot from all the participants, we don’t expect any “payout” from hosting a discussion such as this. 

We are also capable of organizing support for this on our own – I’ve offered a couple times to speak to the Student Wellness Centre and its representatives. Now, I recognize you and the other professors are busy – and it’s not my place or intention to question you focusing on your own priorities – but if you find that delegating to a group of students is too much to take on at this time, we will organize this event on our own. 

Please remember that the precedent that the Chemistry and Chemical Sciences Department would set by collaborating on a mental health discussion with its students could only have positive repercussions throughout the University and academic community. 

I did my best with the resources I had, with what I knew at the time. I still tell myself that.

Because to this day I can’t shake the feeling that the Event flopped.

March 19, 2014, it finally happened. We gathered late—students I’d known were coming, two or three I hadn’t known, some instructors, and support from Student Accessibility Services.

We split into groups and chatted over a list of questions designed to help us brainstorm solutions to how we were feeling. My group quickly became an impromptu peer support session. There was no talk of coping mechanisms or strategies. It was an outpouring of personal experiences and grievance as we spoke of just how bad things had gotten. I wanted to direct the conversation, but couldn’t. I wanted to talk about how we could change things, improve things, but our group time was up before we even had a chance.

Now the plan had been to share our solutions with everyone. Other groups had actually gotten through the questions, but the answers followed a theme. The students needed to advocate for themselves. The students needed to manage their time better, develop healthy routines. The students needed to speak up. (Weren’t we?) I wrapped up the event with some thoughts. It was getting late and I was getting looks from the instructors, but it was only 10 pm and honestly, since when had I gone to bed that early for them?

The Event came to a close, the anticlimactic result of months of planning, and I felt exhausted and dissatisfied. The following week, at a wrap-up meeting, when one of the instructors said, “Well, we sure heard a lot from one person,” I felt kicked.

For the rest of the semester, I felt I’d let everyone down. I had wanted to hold someone accountable. I didn’t feel like a revolutionary. I hadn’t opened floodgates of empathy from the department or changed students’ understanding of their own wellbeing. I’d barely gotten anyone in the door.

This feeling persisted “despite”, as it was well-trained to by now. Classmates who hadn’t attended would congratulate me for doing ‘something’. You weren’t there, I would think. I blew it. A Christmas card from a Secret Santa in my class said I really appreciate how much you advocate and care for others. I was a little lost for words, but shame won out again. You weren’t there. It sucked.

When I graduated later that year, my friend wrote me these lines:

I think you’re very brave for initiating the mental health program with Dr. [X]. I certainly would not have been able to do that, and I think very few people I know would have enough guts to do it. I’m sure the younger generation CBs [Chemical Biology students] will thank you for your efforts. Many will probably do it silently, in a few years’ time when they’ve gone through the “grind”, so to speak. But know that you will absolutely touch lives with it. And I admire you very much for taking the time and the effort to do so. 

The sentiments slid over me without leaving a trace. There wasn’t going to be a “program”. The Event was a one-time thing, barely anyone who wasn’t involved in the planning had been there and I’d monopolized the entire evening with my speeching. That was how I thought of it and that’s how it cemented: a failure.

It’s taken seven years for me to realize I did nothing wrong. Without the prompt from this Zine, I would never have taken the time to look back on it with any kindness. In writing this, I have gone through grief, embarrassment and, finally, anger: at myself, the instructors, and my classmates for coming up with nothing better than to keep blaming ourselves.

But I’ve also found emails from then, hopeful ones from the planning phase, citing interest and discussion created in the months leading up to the Event. People talking about things they’d never talked about before, learning words for feelings they’d never acknowledged before. I remember the instructors who shared their experiences of university life. And I’ve gone through the cards and letters I kept from my university days, when my classmates and I were holding onto each other for dear life in a storm, as if we could all float if we just created a big enough landmass.

Seven years to learn that no one is solely responsible for a revolution.

When I organized the Event in 2014, I wasn’t alone. My classmates backed me, in the full knowledge that, as fourth and fifth-year students, our chance to reap any benefit had passed. But we didn’t care. I was 21, ready to keep the Chemistry department up past its bedtime, ready not to flinch in the face of our own suffering, ready to change nothing but angry enough to try. For that, I say Thank you. You’ve touched my life with this.