##Content Warning - This essay contains elements of suicide and mental illness## I've lost many people throughout my childhood that shaped me as a person. My grandfather, my great-grandfather, two of my close childhood friends, but none of those losses compared to the recent tragedy I've faced in college. For context, I'm a student at the Colorado School of Mines. It's known for two things, making stellar engineers, and making extremely depressed students. It's a top-notch school, but it has a very toxic learning environment. Students are expected to spend 5-7 hours per credit hour of work, and are encouraged (and pressured) to take a minimum of 15CH. Most students push themselves further, taking 18, 19, and even 24 credits a semester. The school encourages this behavior by providing scholarships and tuition breaks if you max out your workload, leaving most students sleep-deprived, malnourished, and many addicted to substances. Working 100+ hour weeks is completely unsustainable, and being from out-of-state and extremely low-income, also having to work part-time to pay for food/housing, it's damn near impossible. It's affected me too, to the point of attempting suicide, but I was lucky, and a friend saved my life. I'm a survivor of mental illness, and I was working with the school and my peers to advocate a healthier work-life balance, to take an extra year, and to resist the pressure of the registrar and academic counselors at the school. Because of this involvement, it made this tragedy even more personal. Two weeks before COVID-19 hit, I was faced with my own reality-shattering loss. On March 3rd, 2020, Matthew St. Laurent, a close friend and my roommate, took his own life. I had just gotten out of a meeting, and I was headed back to my dorm room, with some chocolate bars I had made for Matthew. He had been "bummed out" the last few days, and I wanted to cheer him up. It was a nice Tuesday night, and I was exhausted. I remember reaching my room, and attempting to open the door. I grabbed the handle, but it was locked. There was loud music playing from behind, a very normal thing for my roommate to do, but we never locked the door. I reached for my keys, and opened the door. I won't describe the scene that I saw, but it was something I would never wish on anyone. No one deserves to find their best friend like that. The rest of the evening was a blur, and I had many people surrounding me, but I still found myself comforting everyone around me. I was in total shock, and I would stay that way for several months. I thought I was a mental health advocate, I thought I knew the signs, I could tell when someone was depressed, let alone suicidal. In some ways, even though I knew it wasn't true, I blamed myself. I felt like I should have done more, I should have known. He said he was okay, he "wasn't depressed", he was "just tired". As I'm writing this two years later, this loss is still fresh in my mind. COVID-19 hit right after and the entire world shut down. Everyone was worried about their own problems, no-one seemed to remember my friend, and those who did, didn't want to talk about it. I was stuck in my room, alone with my thoughts. School became impossible, nothing seemed to matter. I got angry at my college, at society, and at the world. At first, I wanted to drop out. But as I continued grieving, I realized that I should finish to set an example for others. I resolved to finish college, but to put my mental health first. To prove to Mines and to the memory of my roommate that it's possible. I lowered my course-load for my mental health, and received plenty of backlash and criticism. "Imagine *only* taking 12 credit hours". "Imagine taking *5* years to graduate". Two years later, and I'm finally beginning to do better, but it's still an uphill battle. Some days are fine, others are the worst they've ever been. It's hard because most people have forgotten. Many say "That was so long ago, why aren't you over it yet?" I'm currently halfway through my college degree, and I'm determined to graduate. I'm going to walk across that graduation stage, and I'm taking the spirits of those I've lost with me. Even with this said, I still need much support. Technology is my passion, and I want to use it to make the world a better place. I want to work to "fight" mental health, to cure this invisible disease. This scholarship will help me not only focus on my own mental well-being, but enable me to fight for student mental health.