Steven Kazmierczak, who killed five students in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, wrote in his graduate-school application essays that he’d coped with his mental-health problems and wanted to help others. The Chicago Tribune has the essays:
“For as long as I can remember, I have always been an extremely sensitive individual, and feel as though I am able to empathize with other people’s emotional and social needs,” he wrote. “However, some of my peers were not very understanding or accepting, and I feel as though I was victimized to a certain degree during my adolescent years.”
The essays offer unprecedented and chilling insight into the mental-health troubles of the 27-year-old graduate student who two months ago fatally shot five students at Northern Illinois University, wounded 16 others and then killed himself.
Actually, the essays are sad, not chilling. Kazmierczak credited a social worker at a group home for mentally ill young adults for helping him “gain a sense of direction” and go on to college. He wanted to be someone who could change lives for the better. Instead, off his lithium, he ended the lives of five young people and his own.
I have a student who became totally crazed during state testing this week. I don’t think it’s the testing that set her off but rather something that happened at home. I have been trying to see that she gets help. Today I called one of our counselors who told me she was too busy to talk to the girl. I had another teacher take her over to the office any way.