Philadelphia based social worker and doctoral student Olúṣèyí Ṣẹ́gun shared a message from two very different experiences of grad school at the master’s level.
“Just because one environment might not seem hospitable, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a space for you in the grander scheme of academics,” she said.
Ṣẹ́gun wrote a first person account of her Master’s experience on the website Mad in America. She joined People First Radio to elaborate on those experiences.
“I started my graduate education at one university about four weeks into the program. I got hospitalized, ended up taking a year off, and next thing I knew, I found myself in a different graduate program as matriculating back into the other one was I don’t want to say impossible, but very, very, very difficult,” she said.
Following release from hospital, she entered a partial hospitalization program.
“I just got to be with other people who also had mental disorders,” she said. ” I was able to be honest about my symptoms and I learned a lot. I learned, for example, that not everyone has suicidal thoughts. I thought everyone did. And it was a psychologist at the treatment program who told me, ‘no, that’s actually not true.'”
Ṣẹ́gun says the year off was the first time she focused on herself and not anyone’s perceptions of her or what she was doing.
“It made me be honest that I was a lot sicker than I actually thought I was, and my body was like, ‘I’ve been trying to tell you you’re not okay,'” she said.
“I think part of the acceptance is mental illness is complex. It doesn’t matter who you are…there are going to be some hiccups in your everyday process.”
In February 2020, Ṣẹ́gun says she reached out to her university about returning to the program.
“I’m like, I’ve done everything you’ve told me to do. And I’m trying to register back into my program. I was getting a master of social work and a master of public health,” she said. “I was told that I wouldn’t even be allowed to be in the social work building at my university.”
“I was actually speechless.”
She says the school asked for documentation about her medications and treatment notes, but wouldn’t answer questions about who would have access to them.
“A lot of people with mental disorders, our rights are very often violated, but you don’t know any better. So you just go along with things and people do things to you that they’re not allowed to.”
After noticing the impacts the situation was having on her mental health, Ṣẹ́gun decided to withdraw from the program.
“Something in my mind just clicked because I started to learn that I have more control than I think I do,” she said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t have to take this.'”
She ended up applying to Columbia University, a school she had been looking at when she was first looking to enroll for a masters, and she was accepted.
“It was like night and day,” she said. “I was honest about my symptoms, kind of my prior experience because they have to see all your transcripts.”
“They were just really, really supportive. I had so many opportunities and I felt like I didn’t feel ashamed for once that I had to pretend that I wasn’t sick. I could be myself…that doesn’t mean you’re broadcasting everything, but like not walking around with the sense of shame, like shame is a very heavy emotion.”
Ṣẹ́gun has a Master of Social Work from Columbia University, and is a doctoral candidate in the school’s Teacher’s College Health Education Program. She also works with veterans at at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center.
“I would encourage people to seek help wherever help is found,” she said. “Professionals are great as our friends are not always equipped to deal with the seriousness of what we’re going through. So to keep that in mind as well.
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