Name: Overcoming Post Graduate Depression | Haydee Alonso | TEDxUTEP
Uploaded: 2025-04-19T17:54:24.000Z
Duration: 13 min 25 s
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There is no official diagnosis for post-graduation depression.

To-infinitive

And I think there's a lot of research about depression and anxiety among college students, and I'm not here to talk about that.

I'm not here to lecture you on that or give you textbook definitions of what that is or what that feels like.

I'm here to talk about depression after graduation.

And it's a topic that is not spoken about in university, hence making it difficult to recognize, especially by someone that has never suffered from mental illness before.

So, I graduated from high school without absolutely no idea of what I wanted to study.

I juggled around with the idea of psychology and I took a couple classes here in UTEP.

But I always had a lot of curiosity for the arts, so I decided to take one class to take the edge off, and that was it.

I answered what it is that I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

And it's a very big jump, I feel, from high school to university.

It's a lot of new experiences and new feelings.

We're coming into a university and we're meeting new people.

We're making new friends, losing old friends.

We're going through heartbreak and finals and advisors, and it can be a lot.

So I graduated, I made it in 2010, and I wanted to do a master's.

That was always something that I wanted to do, something that was always in my horizon.

But I wanted to take a couple of years in between.

And I know a couple of friends that did their master's right after bachelor's, like they graduated in April and then did their master's in August, and props to them, because girl, university is rough.

And I, in particular, needed that two-year gap between my undergrad and my graduate.

And during these two years, I thought to myself, you know, if I'm going to do grad school, then I was going to do it right.

If I was going to apply to grad school, I was going to apply to the best art and design school in the world, the Royal College of Art, which was my dream school since I realized that I wanted to be someone creative.

And so I applied, and I think I was much more resilient back then, because I was living under this mentality that, you know, the worst thing that can happen is nothing.

You know, the worst thing that can happen is for you to stay in the exact moment where you are now.

And for some reason, that was less terrifying than not even trying to begin with, you know, less terrifying than living with a what if.

And I moved to London for two beautifully magical years.

And I was creative in a way that I had never been before.

I was surrounded constantly by innovative people, creative people that had worked just as hard to be where I was, where we were.

And this question resurfaced again, this question of who I was going to be for the rest of my life.

And this time, it had a little, it had more weight to it, more meaning.

Because this time, I wasn't working towards a master's.

You see, the question of who I wanted to be for the rest of my life was for me and me only.

And that was a little terrifying to answer for me.

So I decided to come back home after half a decade of being away from it.

And a lot of things happen in five years.

I was no longer the same person that had left.

But my family had established different routines, which is only normal.

My friends, you know that I came back because I was craving the social support.

My friends from high school had either gotten married, started to have kids, moved away, or started their doctorate.

So it was kind of a bigger shock than I was expecting to come back home.

You know, I thought I was going to come into this bubble of warmth.

And it turns out that I was kind of confused of what home was.

So with this, of course, you know, it resulted in, I guess, a deep feeling of displacement.

It seemed like I was taking these steps backwards.

I came back home for a reason, for the social support that I didn't find.

And I felt extremely disorganized, both creatively and monetarily.

So much so that the little money that I had left from grad school, I blew off in six months.

Because what acts as a better distraction than alcohol and partying?

So much so that I had to start waitressing again.

And not that there's anything wrong with that.

That got me through my bachelor's and that allowed me to pay for rent and materials, among other things.

But I had promised myself that after my master's, I wasn't going to do that anymore.

And here I was, with the diploma from the best art and design school in the world, asking if you wanted a salad with that.

Again, it seemed like another step backwards.

And so here I was, back home, refusing to make anything new or asking for help.

Because I had no idea that I was going through this.

Because you see, the word depression has a zillion connotations attached to it.

And I imagine someone that's in their room with the lights off and having trouble sleeping or sleeping too much.

And you see, I was doing the exact opposite of what I knew depression to be.

I was pretty much doing everything to distract me from the fact that I wasn't where I thought I would be.

And what is so confusing for me about all of this is that I had no idea that I was going through this.

And I think educational institutions do a really good job in painting this beautiful picture for their students.

You know, we've won half the battle because we're here, right?

And attending university and graduating is 100% something to be celebrated, totally.

But I think here, we're really focused in acing that exam and in graduating in the top of our class because that, in theory, is a testament of who we are, right?

If that, in theory, if we graduate with good grades, then our employer is going to see our efforts, right?

But you see, the thing is that there is a hundred and a hundred hundreds other people that want the exact same thing that you do, the exact same job position, the exact same salary.

And so I stood still because I didn't know better.

I didn't know that I needed help or where to ask for help.

And now that I speak about it with my friends, everyone's like, oh my God, I was going through this.

And that's the thing, you know, since it's not something that is mentioned in university, it's just something that just hits you like a bus when you graduate.

And then I started thinking about my definition of success.

And I forgot that the definition of success evolves, you know?

And it is very easy to confuse your definition of success for other people's definition of  It will never be the same.

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Overcoming Post Graduate Depression | Haydee Alonso | TEDxUTEP

absolutely

recognize

depression

access