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. I knew my parents were spending $200,000 to put me through college, and they rightfully expected me to concentrate on school.
What I’ve learned during my time here, however, is that academics represent but one component-albeit an important one-of a Vassar education. Other important pieces of the puzzle include things I’m quite proud of, like growing as a person and getting involved with worthwhile causes, and things I’m a little less proud of, like dancing at Matthew’s Mug until 2 a.m. and going home to eat an entire Napoli’s pizza by myself. (Note to underclassmen: Eating a whole pizza in the middle of the night by yourself is a bad idea.)
Yet perhaps most importantly, my Vassar education has taught me that my ability to make a difference in the world and in people’s lives is limitless.
For me, this realization came after I discovered a group called ACT OUT during my freshman year. The organization, still in its infancy, was composed of several young political activists seeking to end LGBTQ discrimination. That year I participated in two sit-ins at the New York City military recruitment center to protest “don’t ask don’t tell.” At the second sit-in, six Vassar students told the recruiters that they wouldn’t leave until Curt Peterson, an openly gay man, could enlist in the military. They were arrested for engaging in this courageous act of civil disobedience. I was immediately hooked.
I had never intended to seek an official leadership position in the group. But in the spring of my junior year I went to Washington, D.C. to intern with the Human Rights Campaign, and for the first time I felt like I could do anything. After returning to Vassar, I channeled all of my energy into being president of ACT OUT. As it turns out, we really could do anything. With the help of my amazing co-president and our dedicated Executive Board members, ACT OUT chartered two buses and brought over 100 students to the National Equality March last fall. We raised $600 for a LGBTQ homeless youth shelter in New York City. We attended a marriage equality rally in New Paltz. We single-handedly planned and organized a Congressional Lobby Day to support three pieces of federal legislation. And, most impressively to me, we convinced two members of Congress to co-sponsor a bill that would help prevent anti-LGBTQ bullying in public schools. We had indeed made a difference in the world, regardless of how small that difference might be.
Without diminishing the importance of schoolwork, I would say that the best advice I have for students is to take an active role in Vassar’s non-academic student life. During these four years, we are given almost entirely free reign in our extracurricular activities. We have the opportunity to work with low-income children in local schools, to support social and political issues we care deeply about, to help get-out-the-vote in Poughkeepsie during election years, to food-drive for local homeless shelters and to do any number of other things that suit our interests. To all students, I urge you to join an organization. Get involved with its leadership. Brainstorm new ideas. You’ll be surprised with what you’re able to accomplish during your time here.
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.
The Vassar of my imagination was loud and liberal. As a prospective student, certain “Vassar traits” immediately stood out to me: Vassar students love to walk around campus barefoot, Vassar professors like to be called by their first names, not their last, and Vassar coaches love to showcase the accomplishments of their teams. I think I surprised my parents when I chose to apply early decision to Vassar over some other top-ranked liberal arts colleges because I am pretty quiet, I like to wear shoes (or at least flip-flops), and I prefer to address professors by their last names. Perhaps not the most “conventional” Vassar student, I nevertheless found my place at this school.
Driving through Main Gate in the fall of 2006, I knew I had a lot to learn here and an ocean of opportunities to choose from. The best and fastest way to get acclimated to a new environment is to get involved. So that is exactly what I did. Beginning my freshman year, I committed time and energy to Vassar athletics as a tri-sport athlete in volleyball, squash and rowing, and to the Vassar Student Association (VSA) as class vice president and VSA president. I stretched myself to my limits trying to find time to balance class work, athletics and student government. I traded countless hours of sleep for late night meetings, early morning practices and weekend tournaments off-campus. And I am still not ready to leave.
Thinking back on the last four years, a few moments definitively stand out in my memory: climbing a 75-foot ropes course in Virginia with the volleyball team and coming one step closer to overcoming my fear of heights, winning the VSA presidential election and looking forward to a year of progress, exploring the ice caves at Mohonk during senior week last year, attending candlelit After Hours concerts in the Aula and competing in my last varsity athletics tournament at the national squash championships at Yale University.
The time I’ve spent on the court, in the office and in the dorms have come to define my Vassar experience, almost, if not more than, my time in class. On a more personal level, my term as VSA president has been rewarding, despite the many difficulties that came with the position. I learned how to communicate calmly and effectively, how to listen to different perspectives with an open mind, and how to negotiate and compromise. I am proud that my initiative to grant athletic credit to varsity athletes passed and will be enacted next fall. This is evidence attesting to the fact that incremental change can be accomplished at this institution to better the lives of students, faculty and staff.
In being challenged to rethink my core beliefs, I have learned practical life skills that I will carry with me to law school next year and through life afterwards. As I prepare to move on into a new chapter of my life, my dear alma mater will be close to my heart and always in my mind.
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. As we approach graduation, I’m realizing more and more that it seems like, until this moment, everything has been in preparation for the completion of our college education and now, as we near the end, I find myself asking: Now what?
In order to not completely diminish our direction and enthusiasm for the future, the truth is that the lot of us have certainly approached our college educations as a medium through which we can move on to great careers, further research or education opportunities or simply a life guided by the knowledge and experience of a liberal arts education. Having experienced Vassar and all it has to offer, I leave here with the fabulous sensation of knowing that, while a comfortable and familiar place, Vassar has made me ready to go because of its effectiveness as an institution of learning and a place that prepares its students to do great things.
As I look back at my four years here, my first thoughts are about how much I’ve changed, how my professors, friends and mentors have altered the way I think about things and mostly how I think about myself. I remember entering the gates of Vassar in 2006 with expectations that seemed inflated and idealistic and I am leaving here having met all of them and exceeded most.
It’s hard to condense what it has been like to be a Vassar student into so many words as the experiences are numerous and the lessons often unexplainable. I can say this, however: Vassar has taught me how to think. I learned somewhere around the second semester of my sophomore year that I don’t have to believe every theory or article my professor presents to me or adhere to the opinion of the most aggressive student in class. Rather, I learned that these things were there as challenges to my own imagination and channels through which I had the luxury of deciding for myself what I was going to think about and take from each individual experience. I learned that not until you know what you’re confident about and have sufficient evidence or cause to believe in it should you begin to try and convince others of it. I learned that thinking, and thinking well, can get you anywhere.
As I approach my final days here, I think of the 34 credits I’ve earned across numerous disciplines ranging from women’s studies to economics and American Sign Language to Proto-Indo European linguistics and feel as if I’ve been filled by the knowledge of how to engage, how to explore and how to grow.
What comes next? Well, specifically, jobs, graduate school, time off, exploration and fellowships, etc, but in the more general sense, who really knows? On May 23, we will be setting out from the gates of Vassar and be have our knowledge and skills put to the test in making this world what we want it to be and in using our education to change realities and develop new ideas. So when all along we were preparing for college with an uncertainty as to what would come next, my feeling is that there was no way for anyone to inform us on or prepare us for that part. We’ve finally reached the point where we’re in control of the “what comes next,” and I truly believe we’ve all been sufficiently prepared to depart and find greatness.
My best wishes to the Class of 2010, and may we all contribute a little of what we’ve learned within these walls to the betterment of what awaits us outside of them.
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. Like eating a honey crisp, I have devoured the sweetness and tartness of Vassar over the past four years: pierced the skin of the apple of knowledge, bitten into the smooth flesh that lies beneath and pondered the remaining core and the perfect wholeness of the seeds.
I came to Vassar right before apple season. Arriving from Colorado, I was struck by the fields and fields of apple trees near campus. The abundance of apples that came in the fall was a kind of miracle to me: so many kinds, so many tastes. My classes were equally diverse and delicious, each like a new variety of apple. I studied anthropology, sociology, art history and English. I learned how to think and ask questions about the origins of ideas; their many tastes; how to cut into them, parse and divide them; and how to relate these slices to each other. I discovered the joy of slicing into an apple to savor its sweet, juicy, tart essence in every bite. After a period of tasting-searching for the juiciest bite into the wisdom I sought-I eventually fell in love with culinary anthropology and French. I delighted in thinking about the intersection of culture and food and became addicted to the taste of the word “pomme” (the French word for apple) rolling from my tongue. Professors would pluck apples from the highest branches of trees that I could not yet climb on my own and pass these pieces of wisdom down to me. They pushed me to strive, taste, seek, discover and cultivate my own orchard of apples.
The apples grew. I fertilized them with joyous, sun-dappled afternoons spent listening to my friends play fiddle in the Vassar orchard; cat naps between bouts of intense studying, reading and writing in the chairs of the Vassar library; and classes that left me hungry for more. I watered my trees with occasional tears from the pains of growing and learning and sweat from the heat of getting boxes up and down four flights of stairs on move-in day. I discovered new varieties of apples during my junior year abroad in Paris, France, where I fell in love for the first time, strove to make a perfect tarte aux pommes and learned about living in another culture. When the lower branches of my trees leafed out and started to bear fruit, I shared what I had learned with other students who were hungry to discuss knowledge: how to write a better paper in the Vassar College Writing Center or another way to get at the core of culture as an Anthropology Department academic intern. The spring days were long, lingering and sweet, and my trees blossomed.
And, now, too soon, I have come to my last season at Vassar. I will not be here in the fall when the apple trees again bear heavy, ripe fruit. I will be in Arizona, where there are fewer apple trees, making pastry at a restaurant in Flagstaff and satiating my taste for life in the Southwest. My little crop of Vassar apple trees goes with me. I have tasted the sweetness of the knowledge of the Vassar community, and I will never stop hungering for the crisp, sweet-tart taste of learning something new.
I think of Vassar and the taste of apples fills my mouth.
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. Here goes!
1. “Achievement of depth and range of knowledge in a single discipline or in a subject approached through several disciplines.”
Okay, I’ll agree with that. I came in with the intention of being a biology major, declared the first week of sophomore year and never looked back. Sure, I tried to see if there was anything else I felt as passionate about-astronomy, education, psychology, music, languages-but I just couldn’t find anything. Thank you for letting me pursue a well-rounded education; I can now go, “Ha!” at universities that have a dozen or so requirements for their students. My love for the Vassar curriculum is mainly due to the amazing faculty employed at the institution. Most, if not all, of my professors, have been so excited about their area of study and so eager to share not only their academic knowledge, but also their life experiences, with their students. Being at a small school allows these relationships and truly does motivate you within the classroom.
2. “Recognition of the different kinds of knowledge and their scope and relevance to one another…[such as] between people and their social and physical environment.”
Oh, Vassar. When I first drove through Main Gate that rainy Sunday, little did I know that the terms “heteronormative,” “awkward,” “gender-neutral” and “Nilda” would become integral parts of my vocabulary. Or that skinny jeans and flannel would become integrals parts of my wardrobe. (Well, not mine, but other people’s. You know who you are.) As for the physical environment, little did I know that finding people running/walking naked through the Library was acceptable, and even expected, twice a year. Or that where one lived on-campus carried an incredibly high degree of house pride (GO STRONG!) and house stigma, and that one contributed to it whether one was aware of it or not.
3. “Immediate experience of creative ideas, works of art and scientific discoveries.”
Definitely got my dose of all three, even if didn’t understand what was going on (which, as an extremely creatively challenged person, was most of the time when it came experiencing the first two). I’ll freely admit that I’ve sat through plays and stood in front of works of art, not really getting the artist’s “message,” but I came to appreciate the time, energy and love that went into it. Hey, I find beauty in a good recrystallization, so to each their own.
4. “Development of the powers of reason and imagination through the processes of analysis and synthesis.”
I’ve learned that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, and that I don’t have to agree! You know how in high school, it was “cool” to go with the majority (even if that meant thinking Edward Cullen was the hottest thing on the face of the planet)? Here, I could tell someone that I completely disagreed with something they said (and counter with something like, “I think Jacob Black is the hottest thing on the face of the planet”), back it up (“Edward sparkles like a girly-man; how is that hot?”), and continue in an intellectually stimulating debate (“Whatever, Bella doesn’t deserve either of them, she’s just an angsty whiner”) without fear of being labeled “uncool.” Being at a liberal school really does force you, for better or worse, to open up your mind to all possibilities pertaining to life, and I’ve come to appreciate how my mind has changed since freshman year.
So, Vassar, you’ve done good. I knew you wouldn’t let me down (just like my parents, who never cease to tell me how my four years better have been worth every penny, knew you wouldn’t). You’ve introduced me to some of the most amazing people I know and who I can’t imagine my life without, and opened up my mind in so many different ways that it would be hard to quantify. You’ve helped me grow into an independent and confident person, ready to take on the world. Well, not the real one-the medical school one. Real world, get ready. I shall take you on in about four years, up to my eyeballs in student loans and lost hours of sleep. Because if there’s anything Vassar has taught me, it is to never be afraid of taking on challenges, even if you have no idea how you’re going to do it.
