Hello!
My name is Monica Gates, and I’m a sophomore at Wellesley College. This is the start of a whole year of blogging that will describe my life here at Wellesley, one Wednesday at a time! I can’t believe how lucky I am to be back here, typing away, because I was fortunate enough to hold this job for the Admissions Office last year as well. Ms. Lucy Pelham has graciously allowed me to come back, and I am now representing the Class of 2015 once again!
Here’s a little more about me, if you haven’t been dutifully reading my posts starting from September 2011 and traipsing along merrily throughout my first year and summer :). I’m from Edina, Minnesota, where I graduated from Edina High School in 2011. I then attended Wellesley for my first year of college, and also spent the summer here doing research in Wellesley’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program. I am now here again, ready to begin my sophomore year. And I can only tell you how much of a relief it is to be back here as a sophomore, because as much fun as it is to discover college and all its activities for the first time, it is so very easy to fall into my same activities as last year, which I happily have!
What are those activities? Well, for one, I write this blog :). That’s one of my sources of income, the other being doing research for Professor Bevil Conway. This is a new development, as I did research for Professor Arumainayagam last spring, and Professor Higgins this summer, but I am very excited to begin working in Professor Conway’s neuroscience lab for the first time this year. You will undoubtedly hear more about this throughout the year, as I shall be working at least 10 hours a week in his lab, which is just under the maximum workload for one of Wellesley’s classes (11 hours). This is why I include research as one of my “classes” in my personal classification scheme—a list of which you will see shortly!
I am apparently a die-hard science nerd, since all of my classes are in the Science Center this semester :). I didn’t mean for this to happen—in my previous semesters I have included at least one humanities class per semester—but as a possible-neuroscience major I suppose it’s to be expected (we don’t have to declare until the end of the year though, so nothing’s set in stone!) This semester, I’m taking Chemistry 212 (Organic Chemistry 1), Math 215 (Math for the Sciences—an application class involving differential equations and linear algebra), Psych 101, and Neuroscience 200. Along with research, that sets me at a virtual five classes with three labs, which is quite a workload. A typical Wellesley science schedule is four classes with two labs, which is quite demanding in itself. I am a bit nervous, but excited, to see how this increased workload plays out!
The final activity that I do at Wellesley, last but definitely not least, is swim for the varsity team here. Our season runs from next week to the end of February, so I shall be talking quite a bit about my fellow swimmers, our meets, and everything else that swimming entails (teaching swimming lessons, hosting prospective students, and more!) for a substantial section of the year :). I also ran track last spring, and though I don’t know as many of the varsity athletes here as I probably should (I think there are only about 200-300 of us), I’m quite happy to answer any questions about varsity sports, or indeed about any of the activities I’m involved in. I actually embrace questions in general, as even if I haven’t done something, I likely know someone, (or know someone who knows someone) who has. So PLEASE ask me questions and leave comments—it makes me very happy to have a message pop up in my inbox!
Now that I’m done with my lengthy introduction, let me tell you about some of the things that are happening on campus! I have to say, I completely forgot between the end of last year and now how busy life at Wellesley is. Since classes started last Tuesday (… I cannot believe that was only a week ago. I feel like I’ve been here forever) we’ve had Convocation, step-singing, Flower Sunday, classes, the Activity Fair, the 2012 Kenner Lecture by Sheryl Wudunn, Remix, and SO much more, which isn’t even counting Orientation Week, Sustainable Move-In, and Let Me Speak before this. I’d like to link to Wellesley’s Daily Shot page, where most of these traditions are described, as I won’t get the chance to explain all of them. I didn’t even get the chance to attend many of these (did I mention classes had started? That means homework) but I attended most of them last year.
I’d like to highlight three of these events, Flower Sunday, Let Me Speak, and the 2012 Kenner Lecture. Flower Sunday is one of my favorite traditions on campus; this is when first-year Wellesley students (the “little sisters”) get paired with older Wellesley students, who are expected to act as their “big sisters” throughout the year. On Sunday morning, big and little sisters gather together, where the big sisters give their littles flowers and they attend a ceremony at the Chapel. But a big sister’s commitment doesn’t end there—she is responsible for checking in with her little sister all throughout the year, by scheduling meals together or otherwise hanging out, just to make sure everything goes all right. And all of this is part of a larger support network for first-years, made up of peer mentors—first-year mentors, resident advisors, academic peer tutors, athlete mentors, unofficial Wellesley upperclasswomen— as well as adults, like Dean Tenser, the CWS, professors, our professor advisor, resident directors, our cafeteria staff, our janitors, and everyone in the Wellesley community. As one first-year, Tara, wryly mentioned, “at Wellesley, they lay us down like marshmallows.” I agree, and think that Flower Sunday is one of the most special parts even within this enveloping support. It is a time when upperclasswomen freely choose to dedicate themselves to an entire year of helping a fellow Wellesley student find her feet—and I find this exceptionally special.
Time for another one of my absolute favorite traditional events on campus—Let Me Speak. After last year’s performance during Orientation Week, 7-8 Wellesley students applied for and were selected to give personal monologues for next year’s Let Me Speak event. These selected students drafted more than 5-minute-long speeches of their struggles at and before Wellesley, practiced with a professor of theatre here, and delivered them before the entire class of Wellesley’s newest students, speaking of the challenges they overcame and continue to struggle with. This year, Wellesley’s Diversity Initative made a fantastic decision to hold the Let Me Speak event not during Orientation week, but on Sunday, when most of the upperclasswomen would be back on campus. This meant that I was able to see the performance, and just like last year I was blown away by the courage of my peers to expose so much of themselves, to describe the primary struggle in their lives that had hurt them the most, that led them to gradually transform into the astoundingly brave, strong women they were today. I don’t want to discuss their names, since they already gave so much of themselves so that their incoming Wellesley peers would know they are not alone in their struggles, but I’d like to mention some of their stories. One student worked for years to collect enough money to allow her grandfather, her and her brother’s primary caretaker, to have cataract surgery. Another spoke of her continuing struggle against depression, others of their gender identity and of the rejection of having a different sexual preference. A student talked about the isolation of being multicultural and not fitting in in either, while another spoke of the pressure to perform as the only child of her divorcing parents. All of us have our own challenges, but Let Me Speak students have overcome seeming insurmountable struggles, and then have the strength to want to share all they have gone through, so that we will not be so alone. And what makes this even more significant to me is that the Let Me Speak students aren’t specially brought in to share publicized difficulties, like our lecturers are—these are ordinary Wellesley students, who I see in the halls every day, who have so much inside of them that I would never have seen without their spoken-word performance. This fact astounds me, and makes me appreciate my peers so much, in that ordinary students here can be so, so extraordinary, and yet we would never know. It humbles me, as I wouldn’t consider any of my struggles worthy of a Let Me Speak performance. But that so many of us have struggles that are worthy, and are willing to give even more through sharing, is something that I find inexpressibly frightening, dignified, and wonderful.
It is hard to follow a Wellesley Let Me Speak performance, but the 2012 Kenner Lecture by Sheryl WuDunn was also intensely impressive. For the first time, first-years were offered optional summer reading this year, and were sent a letter by Madeleine Albright with a free copy of Wudunn and Kristof’s book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” After talking with Erin, a first-year swimmer, I got ahold of the book and read it through myself. Half the Sky is based on the quote that women hold up half the sky, or this human world, and that gender equality is not only the path to economic success, but is this century’s greatest moral challenge. It gave personal examples of the horrifying conditions women in the developing world face today, including 1/7 rates of maternal mortality and sexual trafficking, but it was a book that focused on solutions, celebrating women’s education, microfinance, and the success stories these two journalist encountered. It gave advice to what Western readers could do to help, and, as Ms. Wudunn put it, it was about laying out the facts, so that eventually a movement could be built that would connect with grassroots organizations within developing countries so that the women in these areas could change their communities. Ms. Wudunn quoted Hillary Clinton in her presentation, stating that “Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not,” and how we, as students who had “won the game of life” just by being in the room listening to her lecturing, had a corresponding responsibility. She urged us to find what we were passionate about, and that small steps would bring us eventually to where the world ought to justly be.
And that is what I think our challenge here at Wellesley is. I know I want to help, want to make a difference in the world, but it is very hard to connect words delivered from someone as successful as Ms. Wudunn to what I can do as a student without a college degree. I am interested in science, which is a ways apart from policy, and though science has its own very definite impact to make on the world, I’m not at a point where I can make that impact. I want to grow up a make a difference, and yet the more I learn about people’s jobs the more I realize that most people aren’t forging the way in human rights; they are working jobs and raising families and creating their own personal happiness, not equipping themselves to tackle poverty and gender equality world-wide. And I know that this pressure exists at Wellesley—people want to be these famous leaders, want to be making a difference now, want to be earning qualifications and developing skills so that they’ll be great later. However, as one of my friends reminds me and I remind her back, we are actually here now. We are not here for our futures (though we actually are), and it is not possible that we will all be famous leaders who make an impact (and even if we all were famous leaders, it will take many years of experience and thinking and training in which we are not.) I feel like we’re all focused on what’s ahead, thinking our lives will begin then, and not focusing enough on the now. Because there is a now, and now’s when we’re supposed to have fun, because when we have fun learning we’re finding a passion, and this passion will ultimately lead us to making that difference, because when people are passionate they work. So the pathway to success is all backwards and forwards and circular… but we will negotiate it. This is what I think at this moment, and I look forward to seeing how I will evolve—because I can tell I have already changed, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
So that’s me! This post was rather thoughtful, but I find that I run through cycles of what I call my “deep” posts (heehee—I wish :)) and when I actually describe my days :). I think I’ll save my lab pictures for next time, but be prepared to meet most of my friends and fellow labmates in various classes throughout my posts! And again, I LOVE comments and questions, so feel free to ask :).
Best to you all,
Monica
