Wellesley is a liberal arts college, so we students are expected to learn many things across many subjects, in the hopes of broadening our horizons, learning how to think, and with luck developing our problem-solving skills in a way that will aid us in any endeavor in our future. However, many students here, particularly the science ones, veer away from the breadth idea and soon dive into a specific subject or cluster of subjects (*cough cough Monica-stop-living-in-the-Science-Center!*) and so need a little help in achieving their horizon-broadening goals. That’s where Wellesley steps in with the sticks and carrots: otherwise known as the Distribution Requirements.
The Distribution Requirements are available on Wellesley’s website and include two years of a language (I took language in high school, so passed out of this), PE (done), some classes in Social and Behavioral Analysis (I’m an Neuro major), some classes in Natural Physical Science and Mathematical Modeling and Problem Solving, and the killer: three units total in Language and Literature and Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film, and Video. When I talk to my humanities friends, they bemoan the Natural Physical Science segment; when I talk to my science friends, they’re all behind on the Lang and Lit requirement. I’ve fulfilled almost everything Wellesley has instructed me to… guess what segment I’m missing :).
It probably won’t surprise you that my favorite subject in high school was English. That would be because you’re blog readers and can obviously tell I like writing, given that I’ve been telling you stories about my life every week for over two years now. However, most of my friends and acquaintances don’t associate me much with English, based on the fact that I take at least three out of four classes at the Science Center every semester. And I’ve kept my classes science-oriented for a reason: while knowing how to think in the general sense is useful, knowing how to think in science is essential to my future.
But! While Wellesley cares deeply about my essential science learning, it really does, and lets me leave all of my stuff at the Science Center and study here and see friends here and do everything here but work out and sleep, really, Wellesley says, really you do have to do your Lang and Lit requirement. And I say, do I REALLY have to? with wide eyes and a hopeful gleam, because English isn’t essential, it’s only fun, but I’ve wanted to take it for so long now. And Wellesley frowns sternly at me, and says Really, and I whoop and sign up my junior year to take a whole semester of creative writing.
All creative writing classes here are mandatory credit-non, which removes all the pressure of doing good work while simultaneously not removing the expectation that we do good work. It is wonderful; every week, two of us write an eight-page story (pull it out of our own heads! Create it from nothing!) and send it out to the rest of the class to critique for the next class period. When Monday or Thursday dawns, everyone files into the sunlit classroom, nerves fizzing in two of our members, who are instructed to sit quietly and take notes while the other fourteen of us dissect their work. Not everyone is good, and I only like one out of every two stories: but we’re all not good together, and we’re all trying together, and though writing is done by oneself it is so, so wonderful.
I find myself musing about stories now, looking forward to the three days a week when I can hop onto an elliptical for an hour, let my body move and unclip my mind to wander. Rebecca, another member of the class, says she now has an excuse for day-dreaming, but I don’t dare go that far. Half of the class, Rebecca included, wrote stories before the semester started—I did not, as I feel “essential” should take priority over horizon-broadening. But dreaming for three hours a week when I’m exercising at the same time? For half an hour after each exercise session, when I can type out whatever stories I was imagining? For a few hours every Saturday, the amount of time I’d normally spend on a problem-set for a class? I can make room in my head then, in my thoughts then, for not-good, non-essential, but wonderful imaginings.
It all comes down to balance. I’ve got guilt as my watch-dog; I won’t stray from my science, which is important to me, my long-term lover, my future. I wouldn’t devote more than a class to a fanciful pleasure: English will always be carefully restricted, a release more than work. But as the weeks go on, it feels less and less like a betrayal; less and less like a distraction, and more of what’s always been a part of me. Like English isn’t a body outside: like it’s in me, and I can make time for it, love that part of myself.
Who knows what will happen when the year is done, and I’ve no longer a class telling me to write. I mourn it, like I mourn swimming, an activity filled with team and intensity and love. And yet while I don’t swim on my own anymore, I joined a PE class to reap the same rewards. I swim in a different way. Maybe I will always write in different ways too.
The year’s still young, and I’m still writing. Dear Wellesley: thank god for distribution requirements.