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Friday, August 26, 2005
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SNAPSHOTS FROM HOME A Regular University Diaries Feature  My freshman year at college? Don’t ask. It was strange. But I found myself thinking about it after reading this article in the Washington Post about a woman whose horse also had to apply for admission to her college. I went to a college like that, for a year. A college with stables. Let’s begin by focusing in on UD, circa late teens. A Joan Baez clone hoves into view. Long hair, pathetic clothes (some things don’t change), a nylon string guitar. College? I didn’t have the slightest idea what college meant or where I wanted to go. I knew I liked to read novels and that I wrote pretty well. I knew - my incredulous father, a scientist, knew - that I was beyond belief bad at math. I didn’t know what to do about college, and I don’t recall caring. My mother, a middle-class Baltimore girl, had always been impressed by Goucher College, a place just outside the city for well-bred females and their steeds. She suggested I apply there. I did, was accepted, and went. It was a grotesque mismatch. My mother drove from ‘thesda to Towson every weekend to take me home because I was so miserable. She and my father had paid for the whole year, so I couldn’t leave as soon as I wanted to. I had a very good year there academically -- Goucher was (no doubt still is) a solid liberal arts college -- and then I left. The experience put me off college altogether for awhile. I spent the next year working as a secretary in ‘thesda and then traveling in Europe. I transferred to Northwestern. Much of the mismatchery had to do with the all-girls thing (Goucher is now coed). Plus I’d gone to a public high school and everyone else at Goucher had gone to private school. I didn’t even know private schools existed. My roommate had to explain to me what they were. The atmosphere in the Goucher dorms seems to me in retrospect to have been about the unhealthiest I’ve ever been in. At mealtime, I munched on my burger and watched anorexics wash amphetamines down with caffeine. For dessert, everyone gathered in the lounge and recited the captions accompanying the photos in their horse scrapbooks (“Hay! Don’t I know you?” “Misty’s being BAAAAD.”). The year I spent working and traveling was the chance I needed to focus upon the real world, the things I loved, the ideas and books that mattered to me. By the time I arrived in Chicago, I had a pretty good idea what college meant, and why it was valuable. |