Colorado

There are about a million different opinions on the tragedy that happened in Colorado. Greg and I have been watching some of the coverage on the news, and although the majority of the nation is focusing on the implications for the second amendment, some anchors always point to the question: why? 

I don’t have an answer, but I can speculate about some of it. But I as a PhD student who works in the neuroscience field, what caused him to have his psychotic break is glaringly obvious. It was his first year in school, reportedly it wasn’t going so hot. I’ve been there. It feels like everything that’s ever come easily to you is all of a sudden gone — my friends who have "real" jobs like to point out that I’m not in the "real" world because I’m still in school. The difference between graduate school and your undergraduate degree is huge. I went from being able to balance working 20-30 hours a week, holding a position in my sorority, maintaining a decent GPA, and having a pretty healthy social life to barely being able to stay in graduate school. It was like running at full speed and smacking into a brick wall. I can’t imagine if I had some underlying psychological trigger what the consequences would have been (I watched a friend of mine have her first break during our first semester — she’s now struggling with bipolar disorder and no longer in school). As it is, my doctor medicated me because apparently my lady hormones cause me to become an unbearable crazy person for half the month when accompanied by the stress I deal with from being in school.

Also, news reporters, I understand he had "intricate explosives" in his apartment. Stop sounding so surprised. How can you cite that he was a "brilliant scientist" in one sentence and then act surprised and aghast when this "brilliant" person has figured out how to make explosives in his apartment and rig them as a booby trap. One reporter went so far as to say they were most likely made from "house hold chemicals". And maybe they were. But as I write this, I’m currently sitting in a lab with a multitude of chemicals that I’m sure can be combined to make some kind of explosive (My guess would be they are the ones in the big yellow cabinet labeled "EXPLOSIVE"). Do I know how to make explosives? No. But if I did, who’s to stop me? No one is here. I could easily pour what I needed into some tubes and take them home and make shit in my kitchen. Is doing that against the law? Obviously. But this guy doesn’t exactly seem like he was following any laws. I wouldn’t doubt Colorado’s security isn’t all that different from here. And if he was "brilliant", then I’m sure he could easily figure out how to make these things — or you know, Google it.

So what do we do about this? Obviously we can’t just change the system — academics will never let that happen. But maybe we should try to monitor people within their first year or two — especially if these individuals are coming in directly from their undergraduate degrees. Schizophrenia generally rears it’s head between 18-mid 20s.

What happened is an absolutely terrible tragedy. Gun control doesn’t really seem to be the answer, considering he got his weapons legally — and something tells me he would’ve found another way even if guns were illegal. But maybe as a nation, with these kinds of tragedies apparently on the rise, we should pay more attention to the mental health of our fellow people. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health, it’s just more "taboo" to go talk to someone about what’s going on in your head. That stigma needs to stop. It may not fix everything, but maybe it would be a start.