Akanksha Chawla, November 2010.
COURTESY OF ANKANKSHA CHAWLA
I’m a recent graduate (’14). Most people know me as a staunch defender of DePauw, and I’ve usually thought of myself on the same terms, but recent events have prompted me to reconsider why I fought to return to the school, after two leaves of absence, when so many would have transferred.
I was supposed to graduate in 2012. A terrible and life-determining battle with Anorexia Nervosa decided otherwise, though, so by August 2010, I had to return home to India for a year and a half, where treatment for eating disorders is scarce to none and where I dropped to a deadly 62 pounds and was hospitalized on my 21st birthday. Every day I was back, however, all I obsessed about was returning to DePauw.
I now question why I was so infatuated with this school, and the answer, sadly, has little to do with DePauw itself. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, where the phrase “women’s rights” is an oxymoron, and having been repeatedly abused in India, I’d been obsessed with coming to the States all my life. DePauw afforded me this chance. It was the first place I felt safe.
But looking back, I’m realizing that the only reason I defended DePauw was because of its location in America. When I hit my lowest, DePauw turned its back on me. I returned January 2012, having made some progress but not enough, and relapsed immediately. I was hospitalized seven times in the same month, with a heart rate of 38 and a weight of 66. The doctors emphasized that a 16-hour flight to India would kill me, but it began to appear like my only option. DePauw strongly conveyed that it wasn’t their problem, and technically, it wasn’t, but after having spent all my time shining academically at the school, juggling three programs of distinction, and finding it my home, this was the worst kind of rejection. This was being told I didn’t matter.
To give credit where it is due, the faculty at this school saved my life. Professors took me in to their own homes, took me to the hospital, raised funds for me out of their own pockets. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the faculty here are some of the best in the world: friends at other schools are stunned when they hear my story. And the friends I made here are my closest: they tried to raise money for me through the International Student Bazaar. I survived, and it’s because of them. I graduated summa cum laude last May.
Even so, I can’t help but wonder where I’d be today if I hadn’t found these friendships in my professors, a lot of which were rooted in my enthusiasm for learning. Probably dead. The administration even told one of them that he “didn’t have to do this” — save my life, basically. I don’t like thinking of these questions, but they’re there, and they’re important. To me, now, DePauw is fragmented: there’s the part that cared, and then there’s the part that didn’t, or “couldn’t” — wouldn’t. It saddens me that it’s because of the latter that I don’t miss the school as much as I thought I would, if at all. The former will stay in my life. As for DePauw … I don’t really care.