Crashing out: MIT culture or a sign of something deeper?
A conversation on the progression of the work and mental health culture at MIT
A crash out (n.) is when, simply put, someone freaks out, usually because something pushes them over the edge during an already difficult time. Sometimes, crash outs are loud and dramatic; other times, they are silent and internal, but equally painful to experience. Many people claim to know when such an episode is going to occur, leading to phrases such as, “I’m going to crash out” (even though sometimes it may not actually happen).
It is no secret that MIT has a reputation and culture of being difficult and fast-paced. Given the surging popularity of the phrase “crashing out” in recent history, it is perhaps not totally unexpected that this phrase is being repeated by many stressed, sleep-deprived students. In some ways, this is normal; everyone will inevitably go through challenges, whether MIT-related or not, that they struggle with.
However, one student is pushing back on this notion, questioning whether crashing out is becoming too normalized here. In a recent Dormspam thread, Mahdi Afshari ’27 began a dialogue with the MIT community, asking whether or not the culture of work at MIT and focusing on “being better” has led to a deterioration in students’ levels of empathy towards others and the relationship between people here.
Many responded to the Dormspam email with interesting thoughts. One anonymous person noted a trend of becoming burnt out because of an inability to accept “doing less.” They mentioned a friend who refused to drop even a single class or extracurricular activity, despite showing signs of depression and falling significantly behind in classes, because it would imply that they were not capable of doing the work.
Alumni have also chimed into the conversation; one notes that such a culture of overwork is much more prominent today than when they were a student (class of 2004), and from their perspective, taking anything more than four classes in a semester seems highly excessive. They believe this trend may be caused by increasingly competitive admissions standards. Another alum that attended MIT as an undergraduate and stayed for graduate school shares that conversations with other grad students who did their undergrad elsewhere often reveals this aspect of student culture as fairly unique to MIT, at least in its pervasiveness.
In an effort to get a better understanding of the MIT community’s perspective of this culture as a whole, I sent out a Dormspam email with a Google Form. Here are my thoughts on the results:
Many people have their own interpretations on crashing out, which are actually quite varied and sometimes contradictory. One individual speaks broadly and simply, saying “feeling uncontrollably upset,” whereas others reference specific aspects of MIT. One undergrad compares crashing out to the feeling of being, “basically bummed… the workload getting tough, no motivation, almost like burnout but not really. Feeling lonely. No motivation to do anything besides grind psets, and even that is dry, hollow.”
Others view crashouts as more dramatic: a current junior describes crashing out as “severely overreacting to an event or situation, either mentally or through actions,” and compares it to a meltdown. One first-year even turns to a microeconomic-style definition, explaining that a light level of stress is acceptable. In their opinion, a crash out only occurs when “the speaker believes the marginal unit of stress, in addition to being unpleasant, is also now a net-negative” in regards to productivity.
Between these and other responses, three broad types of the use of the phrase “crashing out" stand out: slow-burning isolation (most akin to what one might more traditionally refer to as “depression,” or perhaps “burnout”), loud meltdown, and bemused resilience. “Bemused resilience” was the hardest of the three to pin down and characterize, but I refer to it to describe the pattern of people who feel like they should be leaning more towards one of the other forms of crashing out, but aren’t. One good example of this is a response by a first-year who says, “honestly when most people say they’re crashing out it’s just a turn of phrase to indicate that they’re going through it, not that they’re actually gonna crash out.” Someone who says that they are going to “crash out” in this context seems to refer more to a high level of stress and workload, but nevertheless, the individual continues on with their work.
So, what appears to be causing the crash outs?
First, the normalization of a high workload. Several respondents and alumni point out that what used to be considered excessive is now treated as standard. Four classes used to be the upper limit; now, people pile on credits and activities until something breaks.
Additionally, some mention the social cost of stepping back. As mentioned earlier, one student refused to drop a class or extracurricular because doing so would look like failure, even though it was taking a visible toll on them. That refusal to accept doing less is a recurring theme in both the thread and the survey replies, suggesting that students don’t feel comfortable taking time for themselves at the risk of failing to reach their “true potential.”
What is not a simple problem, and what we should resist treating as one, is the idea that every mention of crashing out is necessarily pathological. Some people used the phrase casually or ironically, and a few explicitly said MIT has been a wonderful place for them, reminding us that the phrase is not entirely dire. Treating every “I’m going to crash out” as a crisis even when it isn’t one (and wasn’t meant to signal one) risks diluting the subset of those instances in which they are representative of a crisis.
That leaves us with some interesting, and perhaps uncomfortable, questions. Is crashing out a symptom of changing admissions and competition, or is it an intensification of behavior that has always existed? Are the loud crash outs simply easier to notice and therefore more likely to shape campus life? How much of the problem is institutional (based on official MIT policy, such as the lack of credit limits) and how much is cultural (based on student experience, feeling the need to “compete” against other students and even against themselves), driven by peer expectations and expectations about what it means to “grind?” Who gets to decide whether doing less is acceptable, and how do we make that social decision visible?
Some of these questions are particularly difficult to answer due to some level of sampling bias; while some alumni have chimed in both in the Dormspam thread and in the survey about how MIT hasn’t always had the culture it does today, it begs the question of whether or not alumni who didn’t particularly enjoy their time at MIT would still be involved in the community and be active on Dormspam. Similarly, those who may experience the most extreme forms of crashing out may be unlikely to respond to an email/survey about crashing out, while those who particularly enjoy their time here may see it as a harmless turn of phrase and say as much.
The original Dormspam thread also raises a moral question: Is the use of the phrase a form of public catharsis, letting people blow off steam and feel better, or is it a normalization of undue stress and poor mental health? Again, feelings here are mixed; one junior thinks that crashing out can be a form of bonding with friends, and notes that they “don’t think it's great to be judging people for their use of the phrase to indicate that they’re overly stressed.” They also worry that an overemphasis on doing away with “crash out culture” may, in fact, be counterproductive and “discourag[e] people from discussing their issues with others, [which] is not a good thing.” A senior disagrees, reflecting on how a personal mindset change helps them stop “wanting to complain about [their] workload and classwork” and has led to a genuine improvement for them. Now, they say that “it bothers [them] when [they] hear people complaining a ton.” They view these complaints as “generally self-inflicted and/or a mindset issue.” While I don’t necessarily agree with the notion that the stressors that lead to a crash out are mostly self-inflicted, I do understand how feeling as if one should crash out could result in a crash out, leading to a culture of behavior that further perpetuates this mindset.
Ultimately, it may feel like I end with few definitive conclusions, but this is intentional; both because nearly none of MIT’s issues can be resolved with just a single article or Dormspam thread, and because we, as of now, still have far too little information (both from the survey and from MIT institutional data) with which to act on. Instead, after you have a chance to reflect on how your own life resonantes with what was mentioned prior, I’m choosing to end with encouragement to you all — encouragement to use the language that you feel best reflects you and whatever you’re going through. However, I also urge you to reflect on whether or not your language reflects on the broader culture of where you are (MIT or elsewhere), and if that is a culture you want yourself and others to exist in. There is no single answer about how to (or whether to) address “crash out” culture at MIT; language and culture are defined by our use of words, and individually being intentional about if and when we use phrases like “crashing out” can make all the difference collectively.