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409 reviews for:
What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen
Kate Fagan
4.2 AVERAGE
409 reviews for:
What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen
Kate Fagan
4.2 AVERAGE
Touches on a lot of the key aspects that cause stress in student athletes at Ivy League schools, which makes it possible for many of us to relate to part of what Maddison was struggling with. The part about life turning into trying to complete a checklist to get into college when your in high school and then getting to college and being lost in a sense and perplexed by how the future is so unclear is so important. Such a sad read though.
This book is helping me start to understand the effects of social media on the brains of young people. Scary.
What Made Maddy Run should be required reading for all graduating high school senior athletes. As so many of my students show so much of the same mindset as Madison Holleran - this causes me so much concern even at the Freshmen level where students place so much of their self worth on their grades and accomplishments and overload their schedules so that they execute a life plan mapped out by their parents.
Happiness and creativity is something that we rarely allow our students to explore and identify so much so that we've become wrapped up in a culture of "points". It inspired me to reflect on how I run my own classroom and reminded me of the lens of humanity I should continue to view my students through.
Fagan investigates so much of how social media impacts our perceived, projected, and internalized selves that really got me thinking about my own life with social media and how it's impacting my students' lives. I hope all of my students who value themselves in this way and create so much anxiety from what they see/post on social media get a chance to read this book.
This book allowed me to investigate the mind of Madison Holleran, but also forced me to look inwardly at how I utilize social media to a point of feeling disconnectedness and how much it can contribute to the mental health famine that our country is facing right now.
Happiness and creativity is something that we rarely allow our students to explore and identify so much so that we've become wrapped up in a culture of "points". It inspired me to reflect on how I run my own classroom and reminded me of the lens of humanity I should continue to view my students through.
Fagan investigates so much of how social media impacts our perceived, projected, and internalized selves that really got me thinking about my own life with social media and how it's impacting my students' lives. I hope all of my students who value themselves in this way and create so much anxiety from what they see/post on social media get a chance to read this book.
This book allowed me to investigate the mind of Madison Holleran, but also forced me to look inwardly at how I utilize social media to a point of feeling disconnectedness and how much it can contribute to the mental health famine that our country is facing right now.
I picked this book up because I used to work in Maddy's hometown and was struck by the story when she died. Even if I didn't have that connection, I still would've given it five stars though.
Fagan does a great job of discussing the pressures facing young people, and especially athletes, today. Unfortunately, Madison's story is not all that unique, and I'm hopeful that this book sheds some light on the importance of getting rid of the stigma around mental health. A tough, but important read for parents or anyone working with young people.
Fagan does a great job of discussing the pressures facing young people, and especially athletes, today. Unfortunately, Madison's story is not all that unique, and I'm hopeful that this book sheds some light on the importance of getting rid of the stigma around mental health. A tough, but important read for parents or anyone working with young people.
emotional
sad
Terribly tragic investigative story into what led a young woman to suicide. An important read for all parents. My only quibble with the book is the chapters where the author tells accounts of her own life. I didn’t think they were relevant to Maddy’s story.
I skimmed this, and it didn’t do it for me. Maybe the original article would have been a better read - it suffered from a problem nonfiction can have, where every detail is included because a source mentioned it, or to pad what isn’t really enough material. What color bra she dressed in one day is just not relevant. Also, the author chose to make several chapters first person, about her own experience as an athlete and about her writing process, which wasn’t a technique I felt served the book.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Heartbreaking but amazing read. Eye opening on the mental health struggles of first year university athletes.
"Notice how close perfection is to despair."
I have some trouble with Goodreads' Star-rating method. Five is "it was amazing." I'm not sure I'd call What Made Maddy Run "amazing," what I would call it is: important. Vital even. Whether you're still a teenager, a parent of one, or neither. Because its subject matter applies to all of us: the many compounding factors that could lead any person down a path of depression, isolation, and culminate in a tragic ending.
What Fagan describes in this book, using Madison Holleran's suicide and Fagan's own struggles with mental health as examples, is what you could call a perfect storm. An uber-conscious, achingly perfectionist young woman used to excelling at everything she did, used to her peers' acclaim and her friends' support, used to controlling the narrative, and her life, to the point where everyone thought she had "everything", arrives at a new, more competitive environment where her drive to excel, her need for acclaim ends up being squashed by the reality that she's not so special after all and then keeps all her feelings, her depression, to herself to avoid breaking that mirage of perfection.
It was painful to read through Madison's letters to friends, text messages, conversations in which even when she talked about quitting the track team, the reason why she had gone to the Ivy League, she veiled her real pain through "hahas" or dismissive statements. It was like she couldn't bring herself to shatter the image her friends and family had of her. They believed her to be perfect, and not even when her life depended of it, could she tell them that she was hurting and thinking of dying as a solution.
We live our lives online more and more each day. Work, school, entertainment, even friendships are carried out online, where we can control our message but we can't control others' messages or process them like we would in "real" analog life. If a friend tried to sell us, over a cup of coffee, the idea that her life was absolutely perfect, nothing at all worrying her or troubling her, we probably would not believe her. A sad smile would give her away, a too chirpy response. Something. Over social media? We don't have that. We're tricked into believing that Instagram is the full story. We don't have any tells to analyze. And if we're constantly bombarded by these images of perfection, we end up believing they're true. We end up believing we're the only ones with problems. If you pair that with a physiological chemical imbalance? Well, depression is a likely outcome. Feelings of inadequacy that, sadly, leave you even more impaired to connect with others. To be real.
This is what Fagan describes in her book, joined by the pressures of the Ivy League and being an athlete, and being in an unfamiliar environment. Freshman year can be rough. If it hadn't been for the handful of friends I made my freshman year, I'd have been very unhappy. I was in a whole different country, surrounded by people who seemed shinier than me. But I found my little group where I could be myself. Where we could talk about being homesick and hard classes and all of that. Maddy didn't have that. She tried to talk to her friends, of which she had many back home and a couple at her new school. But it seemed like she could never be fully real, she could never let them in to see the full extent of her pain. She couldn't bear to let them down.
This is why this book is so important. That kid who seems perfect? Might be more at risk than the one who's obviously struggling. Maddy did well academically in her first semester at Penn, despite thinking the contrary. She did well in her track team, despite feeling like she was floundering. Therefore, her parents, her coach never thought she'd unravel as fast as she did. Her parents clearly were involved in her life and attuned enough to their kid to know she was struggling, to know she needed professional help. They sought to get her that. It was too late. They thought they had time, but they miscalculated because Maddy still controlled the narrative. She told them she'd be fine returning for second semester, after trying to quit the track team and being convinced not to by the coach, she pretended she'd be fine. She wouldn't. She'd be dead within the week.
September is Suicide Prevention Month. This book should be required reading. Perhaps not for someone dealing with suicidal ideation, but everyone else. We might recognize in time the signs in one of our loved ones, or in our selves, and that might make all the difference.
I have some trouble with Goodreads' Star-rating method. Five is "it was amazing." I'm not sure I'd call What Made Maddy Run "amazing," what I would call it is: important. Vital even. Whether you're still a teenager, a parent of one, or neither. Because its subject matter applies to all of us: the many compounding factors that could lead any person down a path of depression, isolation, and culminate in a tragic ending.
What Fagan describes in this book, using Madison Holleran's suicide and Fagan's own struggles with mental health as examples, is what you could call a perfect storm. An uber-conscious, achingly perfectionist young woman used to excelling at everything she did, used to her peers' acclaim and her friends' support, used to controlling the narrative, and her life, to the point where everyone thought she had "everything", arrives at a new, more competitive environment where her drive to excel, her need for acclaim ends up being squashed by the reality that she's not so special after all and then keeps all her feelings, her depression, to herself to avoid breaking that mirage of perfection.
It was painful to read through Madison's letters to friends, text messages, conversations in which even when she talked about quitting the track team, the reason why she had gone to the Ivy League, she veiled her real pain through "hahas" or dismissive statements. It was like she couldn't bring herself to shatter the image her friends and family had of her. They believed her to be perfect, and not even when her life depended of it, could she tell them that she was hurting and thinking of dying as a solution.
We live our lives online more and more each day. Work, school, entertainment, even friendships are carried out online, where we can control our message but we can't control others' messages or process them like we would in "real" analog life. If a friend tried to sell us, over a cup of coffee, the idea that her life was absolutely perfect, nothing at all worrying her or troubling her, we probably would not believe her. A sad smile would give her away, a too chirpy response. Something. Over social media? We don't have that. We're tricked into believing that Instagram is the full story. We don't have any tells to analyze. And if we're constantly bombarded by these images of perfection, we end up believing they're true. We end up believing we're the only ones with problems. If you pair that with a physiological chemical imbalance? Well, depression is a likely outcome. Feelings of inadequacy that, sadly, leave you even more impaired to connect with others. To be real.
This is what Fagan describes in her book, joined by the pressures of the Ivy League and being an athlete, and being in an unfamiliar environment. Freshman year can be rough. If it hadn't been for the handful of friends I made my freshman year, I'd have been very unhappy. I was in a whole different country, surrounded by people who seemed shinier than me. But I found my little group where I could be myself. Where we could talk about being homesick and hard classes and all of that. Maddy didn't have that. She tried to talk to her friends, of which she had many back home and a couple at her new school. But it seemed like she could never be fully real, she could never let them in to see the full extent of her pain. She couldn't bear to let them down.
This is why this book is so important. That kid who seems perfect? Might be more at risk than the one who's obviously struggling. Maddy did well academically in her first semester at Penn, despite thinking the contrary. She did well in her track team, despite feeling like she was floundering. Therefore, her parents, her coach never thought she'd unravel as fast as she did. Her parents clearly were involved in her life and attuned enough to their kid to know she was struggling, to know she needed professional help. They sought to get her that. It was too late. They thought they had time, but they miscalculated because Maddy still controlled the narrative. She told them she'd be fine returning for second semester, after trying to quit the track team and being convinced not to by the coach, she pretended she'd be fine. She wouldn't. She'd be dead within the week.
September is Suicide Prevention Month. This book should be required reading. Perhaps not for someone dealing with suicidal ideation, but everyone else. We might recognize in time the signs in one of our loved ones, or in our selves, and that might make all the difference.