Jeremy Lin Survives Pressures Of School, Linsanity! Charlotte Hornets Point Guard Talks About Suicide

When Linsanity exploded, anybody with less luster would have folded under the pressure. It turned out that Charlotte Hornets point guard Jeremy Lin had plenty of practice.

In a Facebook post that he wrote after reading "The Silicon Valley Suicides" from The Atlantic, Jeremy Lin recounted how he worked hard to achieve good grades to the detriment of his social life.

Jeremy Lin wrote, "The pressure to succeed in high school is all too familiar to me. I distinctly remember being a freshman in high school, overwhelmed by the belief that my GPA over the next four years would make or break my life. My daily thought process was that every homework assignment, every project, every test could be the difference. The difference between a great college and a mediocre college. The difference between success and failure. The difference between happiness and misery."

He said that the pressures came from all around him-from his parents, peers and himself.

"When I was a freshman at Palo Alto High, a classmate who sat next to me committed suicide," he wrote. "I remember having difficulty registering what had happened. A year later, a friend committed suicide. I saw up close the pain and devastation of their loved ones and in my community."

When Linsanity exploded in New York Knicks, the national media attention turned towards a 6-3 Taiwanese-American who was a bench warmer up to that point. But Jeremy Lin handled the pressures well. After a stint with Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Lakers, he's now playing for the Charlotte Hornets.

Jeremy Lin then has this advice, "We may not have the answers to how to completely solve these issues, but we can take more time to really listen to each other, to reach out and have compassion on one another. I don't have any great insight and I don't know exactly what it's like to be a high school student today. I do know that I'm proud to be from Palo Alto, a resilient community that I see striving to learn how to better support and care for each other."