How do you sum up four years in so many words? It is impossible. After countless hours with friends and teammates, professors and administrators, what I have come to appreciate most about my Vassar education is how I have been challenged to rethink my core beliefs and basic assumptions about the world.
I had never been in love before. I had loved things and events and maybe even people, but I’d never been in love before. Until this place came along. This “ridiculous pink-and-gray college,” as Edna St. Vincent Millay ’17 dubbed it in a 1915 letter to her mother.
I came to Vassar planning to double-major in drama and political science, take the LSAT during my senior year, head to law school next fall and be a practicing attorney by the time I was 25. Along the way the poli-sci major fizzled to a passionless correlate (culminating in its complete dissolution courtesy of the Registrar’s office last week), I took no LSATS, applied to no law schools, and am graduating with a bachelor’s degree in drama with no real life plan other than financial instability and artistic uncertainty.
This past fall I had the opportunity to talk with a number of alumnae/i about my experience here at Vassar. I was asked why I chose the school, what activities I was involved in, my favorite place on campus, and a number of other questions that were meant to detail my personal experience over the past four years.
My senior year of high school, when I came out to the East Coast from northern California to visit the colleges that had accepted me, I didn’t even visit Vassar. I had been accepted to what I thought was the school of my dreams, Barnard College; after visiting there and a few schools in Pennsylvania, I had a choice of whether to spend a day in New York City, or drive up to visit Vassar.
“What will you miss most about Vassar?” a friend’s father recently asked. I took a moment. The campus, the academics, the activities? I went with my friends; “Living in such a high concentration of 20- to 22-year-olds,” I responded.
All the living rooms in the Town Houses (THs) look about the same: one window, linoleum flooring, and—for some reason I don’t think I’ll ever understand—no lighting. In an attempt to set our TH apart, my housemates and I called our living room “Florida” this year.
I called home a lot during my first week of classes at Vassar. I could not believe the workload. On the second day of my Introduction to Sociology class, the professor assigned a book and a five to seven page paper on that book, due the following Tuesday.
Chocolate syrup. Somehow these two words have found themselves wedged into almost every aspect of my time here at Vassar. Chocolate syrup reminds me of the first time I e-mailed my freshman year roommate, who loves chocolate syrup. I hate chocolate syrup, and this is just one example of the many ways in which we are total opposites but soul mates all the same.
The sun setting at 4:30 in the afternoon is really a bummer. That was one of the first things I learned my freshmen year. I didn’t like this place very much at first. It was very cold and very dark, and I couldn’t find anything to eat in ACDC besides chicken wraps and cheeseburgers.
I came to Vassar on a whim. No, really. I applied here because Vassar would give me the option to study the subjects I was interested in, because I thought it would be cool to live in New York (even though I’d never been farther north than Missouri,) and because I liked the name.
I’m sitting at the long center table on the right side of the Library in the middle of finals week. Within the past two days here, I’ve witnessed stress and exhaustion-induced craziness ranging from Red Bull chugging contests to a capella concerts, with a little bit of studying squeezed in between.
It is quite fitting that I’m writing my senior retrospective from a spot by the window on a Metro North Train headed south for the City. Escape defined much of my time here. My constant journeys away from Vassar’s campus were not only an attempt to evade my physical surroundings or my relationships with peers, but an attempt to abandon myself, a concerted effort to avoid facing the confusions surrounding the liminalities of my own identity.
Dear Vassar, Over the past four years, I have learned, experienced and felt so much that I don’t know where to start; I’m also not eloquent enough to put it all together in a beautifully written essay. So I thought I’d take your “goals for every student” from the catalogue—because I’m probably one of the few people that actually read the front part—and use it as an exit checklist.
As of this writing, I have just turned in my second thesis. Normally students are happy to turn in their senior project; I am ecstatic. Now I can actually grasp the fact that my time at Vassar is ending. People always say that college graduation is a major point in your life.
Rain pelted my umbrella as I watched my parent’s rented minivan drive out of the muddy lot behind Josselyn House. Turning back to face the quad, Vassar’s campus suddenly seemed huge and void, blurred in the downpour like an impressionist watercolor of a dreary, unpeopled landscape.
Sitting on the Hudson River one morning, watching the sun ignite the changing leaves that covered the hills flanking the river, hearing the bubbles underneath my boat, the soft splash of oars entering the water together is one of my favorite memories at Vassar.
I can comfortably and definitively say that my time at Vassar has defined who I am as a person. I have never before been in a place filled with so many engaged, brilliant and beautiful people. My experiences here have been entirely shaped by my peers, and as I look toward graduation, I know that what I am going to miss most about Vassar is not meal plans, senior housing or the amazing campus, but the presence and proximity of over 2,000 impassioned people.
Being done with your final set of finals is a wonderful thing. With my work finished I have been able to take my last few days at Vassar at my own pace, sleeping in until ten thirty, playing video games, going to the gym and then having a late afternoon tennis match.
I’ve learned a great deal of important and weighty things in my time at Vassar, but that’s to be expected. What I find far more interesting is the astounding number of absolutely trivial facts I’ve learned about life, myself, living in a community and Vassar.
It’s easy enough to become complacent here. I know I’ve spent too much of my short time here just enjoying the ride, and who can blame us? Vassar’s probably one of the most beautiful places we’ll ever live, we get to read cool books and party away the days.
Thinking back to when I arrived in August of 2006, I don’t think I ended up following the path that I had originally planned. Which is great: I am not the pre-med, cognitive science major that I imagined I would be at this point. Instead, I would say that Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “Do not follow where the path may lead.
As I write this, I am probably more nervous than I’ve ever been. Not the heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed anxiety you get before a performance or a presentation, but something more subtle and difficult to define. Well, not too difficult: I’m scared to graduate.
When I first arrived at Vassar in August of 2006, I felt certain that my primary focus in college should be on academics. After all, why did we come here other than to get the best education possible? I had no interest in running for student government, becoming a leader in any extracurricular group or even getting a campus job.
In my first meeting with my pre-major adviser, Assistant Professor of Biology Erica Crespi, I’m pretty sure that I wanted to be a doctor. So over the next two and a half years I labored through the standard pre-med classes such as biology and organic chemistry, more interested in simply completing the work than actually learning anything.
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.
To Vassar, the apple of my eye: I think of my past four years at Vassar like I think of an apple. One of those light green and burnished red ones whose colors mirror the leaves’ transition from summer to fall. A honey crisp, maybe, that tastes sweet, is not too grainy and has a good bite—just the right amount of lingering tartness.
A couple of weeks ago, a prospective student of the Class of 2014 sent me an e-mail as the contact for the Vassar Catholic Community (VCC). Some of his questions included: “What is it like being a religious student and the leader of a religious group at Vassar? Do you see Vassar as a place of atheism and soulless hedonism, to be blunt? Or are people irreligious but still effectively moral? Is there a spirit of service on campus, or are Vassar kids generally disinclined to interact with or help the Poughkeepsie community?” In my e-mail response and the weeks following, I began to reflect on the last four years and what it has meant to be a “person of faith” at a renowned secular institution of higher education.
To meet us now, you’d never guess that we have only known each other for two years. We are the two graduating seniors from Iced Brew, Vassar’s synchronized skating team, and being on the team has brought us really close together. The team has been a large part of our college experience.
Graduation. It seems strange to talk about that word now as I sit here, one week before I will be participating in what seems like a day I’ve prepared for my entire life. Through grade school and high school, we were instructed and encouraged to do well in our classes, be involved in community work and produce an all around persona that would eventually get us into a great college.
Sitting down trying to write this reflection was possibly the hardest assignment that I have been given during my four years at Vassar because it forced me to grapple with all of my accomplishments, heartaches and disappointments throughout my time here, all while trying to do them all justice in a mere 800 words or fewer.
I came to Vassar with the singular expectation that there would be a space for me to fill. It was to be a social space, an intellectual space, an artistic space. I was going to fall into it when I was ready. I imagined this process of suffusion involving minor adversity here, conversations about topics that defied the bounds of my knowledge there and the occasional irreparably awkward moment.
When I came to Vassar, I wasn’t sure what a college education was supposed to do, and now upon leaving, I am only sure of the magnitude of what I’ve received. The coursework I took over the past four years has destroyed my conceptions and presuppositions about the world, challenging me in ways I hadn’t thought possible or necessary.
I remember two things from the Fall Convocation of our freshman year, in September 2006. I remember the Vassar Student Association president telling our class to relish every moment of our four years at Vassar because before we knew it, one of us would be up there addressing the Class of 2013.
Let’s go on a field trip. Have you ever been to Bonticou Crag? Nope? That’s rough. Everyone should visit Bonticou Crag before they graduate, which is why this is an opportune moment for a field trip. You don’t have much time left! I think Bonticou Crag is the perfect hike.
I first heard about Vassar when a recent graduate from my high school decided to attend. This particular alum was quite impressive academically, so I added Vassar College to my long list of reaches, maybes and safeties. I was a rising senior and thought it was normal to apply to thirteen schools.
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