Student Who Disappeared Explains Why She Did So

The apparent disappearance of Nayla Kidd, an engineering student at Columbia University, prompted a police search and considerable publicity. See for example here and here and here. It turns out that that Kidd opted to drop out of Columbia and start a new life, away from academics. In an essay in The New York Post, now getting much attention on social media and elsewhere, Kidd describes how she became unhappy at Columbia and decided to drop out, intentionally not telling anyone or responding to calls and emails. "I wanted the time to make sense of my situation alone and have the space to comprehend it. I felt like sharing would force me to explain something I hadn’t even figured out myself. It wasn’t normal to just quit school. But I never expected it to get so out of hand," she wrote.