Throughout my high school years, I took pride in being the top of the class. My academic achievements were my sole identity, fueling the competitive drive that has long existed within me. While the aspiration to become “the best” benefited me in many aspects, it also shaped my personality in unwanted ways as I entered college.

During my first semester in school, I shared the room with a girl who also planned to major in biology. We soon realized we had a lot more in common than just our prospective department: we had similar purposes and goals in joining KAIST. Most importantly, we had the same high expectations of ourselves. We spent the first week of the semester pre-reading for classes and staying up past midnight ambitiously planning for the next four years: finishing mandatory courses within one year, taking waiver exams for major courses, graduating early... For the first time, I found someone who understood me so well. It was also the first time I felt the competition so close to home.

Two months passed, and the atmosphere in the room changed completely. My roommate by then had been experiencing insomnia for weeks. She would stare blankly at the ceiling, waiting for the sleep that never came before 6 a.m. She eventually had so little energy left in her to go shopping or do the ten-minute walk to the International Kitchen that she would scrape by lunch and dinner by just drinking milk or eating some tasteless nuts. She spent most of her days progressing through pages of calculus and Newtonian physics while fighting against her exhausted body; but all to no use. She would cry, sometimes quietly and other times hysterically. It was clear that she was suffering from depression.

In many ways, I felt very sorry for her. But in many other ways, I could not fully comprehend the extreme display of emotions and physical torment. I told her that it was normal to feel pressured, and that she just needed to turn that pressure into motivation. I showed her how I scheduled my timetable to work efficiently and suggested that she should do the same. Things are always, however, easier said than done. I started to feel impatient and sometimes even annoyed when she continued her unhealthy and unorganized lifestyle. I stopped telling her that she will do better next time because even I did not see how that was possible. She decided to reach out to the school counseling service, only to waste hours every week trying to explain her situation to a woman who barely spoke English. Eventually, at the end of the semester, she moved to an apartment off-campus to live with other Muslim friends. It was only here that she finally began to make progress and find balance in her life.

Many consider depression merely a lack of personal will or a moral failure, but only people who have been through it can fully understand that it is a real illness, often made worse by social bias and stigma. She said she was lucky to finally find a suitable environment where she could isolate herself from such negative perceptions. As I looked back at our time as roommates, I slowly understood that part of the reason why she could not recover was because of my personal shallow understanding. I also could not help but wonder about what would happen if one day I crumbled under the pressure. Would KAIST finally be offering its international student body an effective mental health support system?