Last night, I opened a letter from the college that I'll be attending this fall that notified me that I've been awarded a full-tuition, four-year scholarship for my excellent GPA and test scores. I was thrilled, and I still am, but, as I thought about it, I realized what the award really was; my school had placed a price on my lost mental health. Over the past four years, I've fallen from being a healthy, strong, independent teenage girl to being a quivering, crying wreck in a corner and, apparently, that's earned me X-Dollars a year, provided that I maintain a 3.0 GPA.

In the past year alone, I have developed severe anxiety, paranoia, sleeping problems, nervous tendencies, and overactive bladder syndrome. And I'm not alone; the editor in chief of my journalism class has developed narcolepsy, my boyfriend scratches holes in his skin when he's trying to focus, and one of my friends is a nymphomaniac. We all sacrifice our health for the accomplishment of what is expected of us. We have to work as hard as we can for as long as we can so that we can go to college without having to worry about paying off loans for the rest of our youth.

When ever someone congratulates me with "you deserve the money" or"you've earned it" I say to myself "of course I earned it; I can't be home alone at night because I'm afraid of the dark, now." I'm sure that, later in life, I'll feel that the panic attacks, terror, and sleep-deprivation will be worth the money. I'm sure that my wet pants will be worth financial independence in the future. But, in the meantime, I think we might need to find a better way to place the prices placed on our withered brains.