Vassar is not the place I imagined way back when I accepted my early decision offer (there’s an original beginning for you.) I envisioned the school as a haven for brilliant bohemians—an Ivy League with more character. I was attracted by the shady campus, venerable buildings and cool name. Vassar. Yep, still cool.
I got my first wake-up call early on, when I learned that Vassar was not the first choice school of many of my classmates. Rather than joining a class of eccentric intellectuals who selected Vassar from a glittering menagerie of suitor institutions, I would have to assimilate as Just Another Brown Reject.
The obscenely wealthy student body was another surprise. My own upbringing was far from deprived: I spent most of high school in the private system, and my parents squirreled away money when I was born to prepare for the staggering cost of higher education in America. Even so, by the end of my sophomore year, I was forced to finance the rest of my Vassar education with loans and work-study. The fact that many of my peers can actually afford the whopping tuition payments, eat out whenever, and purchase a whole Soviet satellite’s-worth of hard liquor is nothing short of astounding. And it can be galling, too. Good thing Vassar social science majors leave infused with a near-fatal dose of liberal guilt.
The students at Vassar have probably been the biggest disappointment. People would act as individuals, I imagined, unconcerned with striving to embody whatever “cool” means at a given moment. I know these people exist at Vassar, but they seem to be a permanent minority. “Free spirits” at Vassar would dress in steel wool if it meant fitting in.
I worked too hard at Vassar. I failed to take a lesson from two friends who dropped out for mental health reasons, and a few months ago I suffered a dissociative “stress-reaction” (read: nervous breakdown) of my own, which pretty well derailed my senior year. And for what? During my senior fall, the term that did me in, I reasoned that all my hard work would go unrecognized unless I clinched general and/or academic honors, and I resolved to get As in four high-level, full-unit courses. With no room for error, I drafted and edited papers more thoroughly than ever before; I dropped out of extracurriculars; I virtually took up residence in the Library, which strained my relationship with housemates. In the end, I accomplished my (stupid) goal. But frankly, who cares? Not the excellent graduate school I’ll attend next year. Not my future employers. In fact, in all likelihood, no one will ever focus on my undergraduate GPA again. I would warn you against making the same mistake.
Part of my unhappiness at Vassar stems from unrealistic expectations. As I hugged my mother before starting college four years ago, she told me, “These will be the best years of your life.” I know she meant it to sound exciting, but frankly, that’s a lot of pressure. Whenever I was feeling down, I felt worse for thinking, “This is as good as it gets.” But I have anecdotal evidence that my mom greatly overstated the undergraduate experience. I’m in touch with alumni who revel in the autonomy that comes after college, and lavish sympathy on me, the indentured academic. I’ve heard the same from professors. I look forward to better days ahead.
I would be remiss if I didn’t end by saying how grateful I am for the education I’ve been given. Though certain aspects of my Vassar experience have been disappointing, the education was not one of them. Although much of what I’ve learned scares the hell out of me, I guess we have to know what’s wrong with the world in order to fix it. Maybe, in the long run, Vassar will be worth the big bucks.
—Tom Stevenson is the outgoing President of No Offense.
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