Consulting is huge at Michigan 

— the job prospect is so popular 
and widespread that it’s even 
designated its own season. From 
August to November, a large 
section of the student body is 
busy sending out their resumes, 
getting in touch with alumni and 
practicing for interviews. 

When recruiters from major 

firms hold events on campus 
— most commonly in the Ross 
School of Business or Blau Hall 
(the University of Michigan’s 
premier 
business 
hubs) 
— 

students flock to auditoriums 
just to shake their hands. The 
goal is to network your way into 
an interview and prepare for 
possible “case” questions they 
could throw at you — tests on 
scenarios you might have to face 
at their firm. Students say, all-in-
all, it’s like adding another class 
load’s worth of work to your 
semester. But by Halloween, 
you 
start 
hearing 
about 

people signing with Deloitte 
or McKinsey & Company; by 
Thanksgiving break, the dust 
has all but settled. Everyone 
can hang up their suits until the 
summer when they either start 
the internship or start the whole 

process over again. 

Despite all the stress and the 

work, the formula of consulting 
is apparently a part of its appeal: 
There’s a clearly outlined path to 
success if you’re willing to play 
by the rules. And if you’re lucky, 
at the end of the summer, there’s 
the all-important return offer. 

I’m a senior in the Ford School 

of Public Policy, and while it’s not 
the primary avenue public policy 
students take after graduation, 
consulting is always on the table. 
Around this time of year, my 
career counselor starts sending 
out emails about information 
sessions, consulting workshops 
and case demonstrations. 

While I have never been 

actively interested in consulting, 
there was a time where I was 
at least mildly intrigued by the 
prospect. Working on projects 
for short periods of time with 
people approximately your own 
age — it sort of sounded like 
school. Ultimately, I decided I 
didn’t want to do something so 
closely tied to business (partially 
because I do math at an eighth-
grade level and partially because 
I want to do something more 
creative) and didn’t take it any 
further. 

I was eight when I first discovered 

fire in my brain. 

In the gentle lull of summer, 

I awoke to a vice-like pain in my 
head, which slowly bloomed into 
a throbbing metronome directly 
behind my eyes. I yelled for my mom, 
who promptly provided Advil and 
water, neither of which did anything 
to curb the pain. I curled my body in 
a ball, wedged my head between two 
pillows and sobbed. The better part 
of eight hours passed, after which my 
weary second-grade self succumbed 
to exhaustion and fell asleep. 

My parents have never been the 

type to make a trip to the doctor 
without serious cause; anything short 
of leprosy or spontaneous combustion 
was merely a chance to “tough it out.” 
Hence, when my mother booked 
me a doctor’s appointment the next 
morning, it was a surprise to all of us. 
It was my first indication that we were 
in uncharted territory; something 
severe and mysterious crept about 
the fringes of the horizon. We entered 
the quaint Vermont clinic as zombies 
might, weary from last night’s 
episode. Nonetheless, we knew what 

I experienced was serious, and we 
were determined to figure out both 
what was wrong and how to fix it. 

It would take several doctor’s 

appointments, an MRI and an EEG 
(the process of attaching electrodes 
to the scalp to detect electrical 
activity in the brain) to gain any 
clarity on the issue at hand. In the 
spirit of medical ambiguity, there 
was good news and there was 
bad news. It would appear that 
I suffered from migraines. This 
was the good news, I suppose. It 
would also appear that there was 
no discernible cure in sight. There 
were medications, treatments and 
prevention methods,but I would 
likely experience these headaches 
for the rest of my life. 

The fire in my brain burned gently 

and steadily. Most days it was tame, 
docile even. Then, without warning: 
an inferno. There was no rhyme or 
reason to it, it consumed when it saw 
fit and dissipated as unexpectedly 
as it blazed. I quickly learned that 
the science behind migraines is 
conjecture at best. They may be the 
result of a faulty vascular system. 
Or perhaps a chemical imbalance. 
No, maybe it’s all due to some 
underlying central nervous disorder. 
The hypotheses are numerous and 
varied, all culminating in a truth as 
frustrating as it is elusive.

No one knows for sure.
As I grew older, the headaches 

worsened, often brought on by the 
hormonal shifts that accompanied 
adolescence. They evolved from mere 
headaches to full-on neurological 
disasters. I developed migraines 
with aura; in addition to the splitting 
head pains, I experienced visual and 
tactile disorientation. It was staring 
into the very center of a lightbulb for 
10 seconds straight. A host of glaring, 
glowing specks reappeared with 
every blink, clouding my field of 
vision. Yet unlike the fleeting blows 

of a lightbulb, these malignant blips 
refused to abate. They expanded, 
consuming my line of sight, sending 
my sense of depth perception topsy 
turvy. They persisted for hours, 
needling their way into my eyes, 
skull and brain.

With the visual aura came its 

equally destructive sister, the tactile 
aura. She brushed your fingertips 
with a gentle tingling sensation, 
which gradually rippled throughout 
one half of your entire body. Half 
of your face, chest, hands and feet, 
completely devoid of sensation. You 
try to drink a glass of water, read, 
enter a lit room, all to no avail. You 
try to push through it, stick it out, 
only to find yourself vomiting in the 
middle school nurse’s office, one 
hand grasping the wrapper of a pill 
that didn’t work, the other limp with 
numbness. One side of your head 
blazes, the other feels nothing at all.

Despite the mystery surrounding 

chronic migraines, every doctor you 
visit will encourage you to identify 
your triggers. They are multitudinous 
and ubiquitous. Anything from 
preservatives 
to 
changes 
in 

barometric pressure can set one-off. 
I was put on a number of elimination 
diets, changed my sleep schedule 
entirely and cut out caffeine. I did all 
in my power, and the migraines rolled 
in all the same.

Unlike many, I’ve had the good 

fortune of sporadic and infrequent 
migraines for the most part. In my 

adult life, I only deal with a serious 
migraine every two or three months. 
As a kid, I was less lucky. In addition 
to my migraines, I’ve dealt with 
anxiety for my entire life, which I’ve 
since identified as one of my primary 
neurological triggers. I now have 

the autonomy to get the treatment I 
need to mitigate the adverse effects 
of mental and physical illness. I have 
the tools I need to adapt to life with 
migraines. But they came at a cost. 
In my senior year of high school, my 
anxiety was at an all-time high. By 
the final semester, I found myself 
waking up to a migraine nearly every 
day. I couldn’t read, study or even 
walk around without help. I was 
constantly nauseous, and the pain 
was excruciating. My grade point 
average plummeted, and my absences 
put me at risk of not graduating.

I didn’t expect it when the 

trailer for the third season of 
“Sex Education” showed up in 
my Youtube recommended feed. 
I didn’t expect the plunging 
feeling of longing and sadness that 
followed either. 

The show had been a godsend 

during my freshman year of 
college, getting me through my 
first and only winter on the East 
Coast before I transferred to 
the University of Michigan. The 
connection also carried into my 
sophomore year at the University, 
as it was also a touchstone of 
friendship between myself and the 
group of friends I became close 
with when I arrived in Ann Arbor. 
And though a year had passed since 
the release of the show’s second 
season, when the long-anticipated 
third season was announced, I 
had immediately texted my friend 
group. I couldn’t wait to spend days 
and nights watching the season 
together. 

But 
between 
the 
initial 

announcement and the trailer, my 
friend group fell apart. By now, the 
season has premiered and I still 
haven’t even watched the trailer.

***
While I don’t watch a ton of 

movies, I consume television and 
other forms of media far more than 
I’d like to admit. If you looked at 
any of my “continue watching” 
pages on any streaming platform, 
you’d see everything from “Kim’s 
Convenience” to “Outlander” to 
“Castlevania.” There are shows 
like “Schitt’s Creek” and “Peaky 
Blinders” that I’ve rewatched 
countless times in their entirety. 
There are even shows in Norwegian 
and Spanish sitting on my “to 
watch” list. 

My tastes, when it comes to 

shows, vary drastically, which is 
why I use them as a way to connect 
with people. It’s very easy to talk 
to someone you hardly know when 
you both can quote every single 

line 
from 
a 

Jack Whitehall comedy special 

or make an obscure reference to 
“Travels with my Father.”

“What other comedians do you 

like?”

“Have 
you 
watched 
‘Elder 

Millennial’?”

“Have you gotten to the second 

season of *insert any sitcom here* 
yet?”

Conversations 
spark 
and 

friendships ignite. To some people, 
this may seem incredibly natural 
— of course, that’s how you start 
a conversation — but when you’ve 
struggled with social anxiety and 
panic at the idea of speaking with 
other students in a class, good 
small talk topics feel like currency. 
And sometimes that’s someone 
referencing a show you just finished 
watching and being able to play off 
of their words.

***
In the fall of 2019, the Doc 

Marten-clad girl who helped me 
move into my residence hall after 
my parents left (with hardly more 
than a wave goodbye) texted me. 
It had been several weeks since 
move-in, and she and I, along with 
two other girls from our dorm, had 
become fast friends, sharing the 
intimate details of our personal 
lives as if we’d all been close for 
years.

One night she told me that 

she was having a panic attack 
— something both of us were 
intimately acquainted with. Both 
of our coping strategies typically 
consisted of distracting ourselves 
until they ended. So, I went to 
her room, and we put on the most 
distracting thing we could think 
of: an episode of “The Marvelous 
Mrs. Maisel,” a show we had 
collectively seen too many times 
to count. The plan was a success, 
and after this night, the remedy 
became a tradition. Any time either 
of us had a bad day, we’d go to one 
of our rooms, eat cookies and put on 
something familiar to watch.

But then the pandemic made it 

impossible to do such a thing. We 
were sent home and had to readjust 
to life without each other. 

At the start, my group of friends 

tried our best to keep in contact. 
We had an ever-running group chat 

filled 
with 

dog 
photos 
and 

laments over our baking fails 
or rants about how our professors 
decided to assign us more work 
than usual because everything 
had gone virtual. A few nights we 
even tried a group FaceTime and 
I introduced them to my sisters. 
Those conversations tapered off, 
though, until the threads grew 
silent.

We all returned to campus 

the next fall, but something had 
changed. The girl who I’d seen 
through panic attacks and who’d 
seen me through depressive spirals 
hardly ever spoke to me anymore, 
and when she did it was short and 
clipped conversations.

Maybe we just grew apart. 

Maybe this was inevitable. Maybe it 
was how deeply rooted my religious 
trauma is and how she was a born-
again believer. Maybe it was the fact 
that her family was wealthier than 
I could ever dream of being, and 
I finally couldn’t keep comparing 
myself to her. Whatever the case, 
there grew a rigid and lengthy 
distance between us. And though 
we tried to watch the last season of 
“Schitt’s Creek” together, we never 
made it past the third episode. 

After several months of not 

speaking but not exactly disliking 
each other, I could keep going back 
to the shows we watched together. 
I tried to laugh at the jokes in “The 
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” the same 
way I once did. Now, thinking about 
the show at all makes me deflate 
a bit inside. I haven’t watched a 
comedy special in months, not 
when they were the first thing 
she and I bonded over. Now that 
that bond is gone, looking back at 
the connections and memories we 
shared over these shows only hurts.

I have not been able to bring 

myself back to “Schitt’s Creek,” and 
the very thought of watching an 
episode of it ever again makes me 
feel a little sick.

***
No one told me I could go to 

graduate school, not until I started 
doing research my junior year of 
college and my mentor told me that 
if I was even considering it, I should 

start 
thinking 
about writing 

a thesis. I very quickly realized that 
my linguistics major wasn’t going 
to get me as far as I wanted in life 
unless I pursued a higher degree. 
I knew I needed to find something 
I could write 30-ish pages on and 
actually be excited about.

Luckily, I quickly uncovered 

my topic of interest in the Mid-
Atlantic/Trans-Atlantic 
accent, 

more 
particularly, 
modern 

representations of it. Think of all 
the characters in the first episode 
of “WandaVision,” or Effie Trinket 
in “The Hunger Games.” Or, think 
about what became my main focus: 
Moira Rose in “Schitt’s Creek.” I 
had pages of analysis planned out in 
my head for Moira Rose, examining 
the way Catherine O’Hara seemed 
to mimic the high-class, most 
desirable, 
golden 
standard 
of 

speech from a bygone era while 
bringing an element of comedy 
to it. I had thought through the 
socio-linguistic implications of her 
dialectic patterns and what it said 
about speech standards in television 
today. I considered its comparison to 
the images of Old Hollywood.

I had it all planned out. But then 

the summer came and went, and a 

friendship 

fell 
apart, 

and 
the 
thought 
of 

objectively examining a piece of 

media that I had such an emotional 
connection to became something I 
simply couldn’t bring myself to do. 

At a school like the University 

of Michigan, it’s not uncommon 
for students to put their academics 
ahead of their mental health — 
I’ve certainly done it. But this just 
wasn’t something I could justify. 
I wasn’t going to risk throwing 
myself into a depressive spiral over 
a paper. It just wasn’t worth it.

***
For now, “Schitt’s Creek” sits in 

my “watch again” tab in my Netflix 
account, along with so many other 
shows I once loved but now can 
never go back to. I’m too sentimental 
to delete them from my watch 
history — possibly for the same 
reasons I collect text messages.

When 
the 
“new 
episodes” 

notification came up for “Sex 
Education,” I wasn’t able to ignore 
the way it made my chest clench. It 
didn’t stop the impulse I felt to pick 
up my phone and text the friend I 
had once planned to watch it with.

And I don’t think I’ll ever watch 

these episodes.

In the same way,I don’t think 

I’ll ever be able to watch the final 
seasons of “Peaky Blinders” when 

they 

are released because of 
the 

inside jokes I shared with my group 
of friends about that show. Even 
the idea of watching the last few 
episodes of “Lucifer” makes me feel 
uneasy because that was the first 
show my friends and I watched 
together after quarantine. 

***
In the weeks since my circle of 

friends splintered, I’ve found myself 
gravitating more and more towards 
media that no one else I know 
watches. Movies I hold close to 
myself and tell nearly no one about 
out of fear they’ll uncover some part 
of me and judge me by the stories I 
love. I’ve discovered new TV shows 
that I watch by myself on weekends, 
silently enjoying the fan culture 
ever-present and easily accessible 
on social media. No one knows the 
kinds of music I listen to, or the 
books I read anymore — those I keep 
strictly to myself out of fear that 
connecting them to relationships 
could ruin them for me.

There is a value in sharing 

these kinds of media or forms 
of art with other people: It can 
establish an easy connection, a 
bridge in an otherwise awkward 
conversation. But maybe there’s 
also value in keeping it to ourselves; 
loving something because it is 
authentically ours, undiluted by the 
fragility of relationships around us.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 29, 2021 — 9

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

MACKENZIE HUBBARD

Statement Columnist

Design by Madison Grosvenor

Design by Katherine Lee

Migraines and other 

pyrotechnics

DARBY WILLIAMS

Statement Columnist

Why (not) consulting?

LANE KIZZIAH

Statement Correspondent

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

S T A T E M E N T

Design by Megan Young