24 Jan My fifteenth reunion is coming up

GOING ON MY FIFTEENTH REUNION

Now that the preparations for my fifteenth reunion at Dartmouth are underway (still unsure whether I will be able to attend, but we shall see), I thought it might be interesting to see how I perceive my college self now. Ha!

I was confused. I was motivated. I was tough, even though I cried daily during the first two months, unable to adapt, for some reason. There was so much noise and excitement around me. I just wanted to be a great student and a decent human being. BUT I also wanted to “get Dartmouth over with” as quickly as possible, an attitude my first-year professors struggled to understand. Apparently, most people would like college to last forever J. I was so motivated to graduate early, though, that I resolved to take on more courses during the first year. For some reason, four years seemed daunting and three years seemed less so. I succeeded. Gosh, that first year was massive. Luckily, I learnt to enjoy the process as the course load got lighter with the advent of my second year.

I was two years older on average than other  incoming freshmen because Europeans start school at 7 and, in addition, I had completed one year of Warsaw University prior to my arrival at Dartmouth. That felt strange. I was the “wise mom figure”, in a way, too mature for the crowd. I knew how to do laundry and how to iron and I knew how to talk life and philosophy. On the other hand,  I was also clueless and less people-smart than other kids. I needed a lot of cultural tips. I was a non-resident alien, as immigration documents aptly called me.

Indeed, there were actually a few important things I never grasped while at college. I did not get the political right-or-left divide all while being fed the identity politics-deconstruction-post-modern- tradition-decrying diet every other day, especially in the French department.  I had minimum political and ideological awareness. As a result,  I did not get it why Catholicism was portrayed as something irrelevant or dismissed in the classroom. I sort of shrugged my shoulders at that and got on with my life; I wasn’t ready for confrontation, I was no Ben Shapiro. Interestingly,  although I was a smart kid overall, I did not grasp the cultural code regarding clothes either. I was at a loss why those good-looking prep school graduates who majored in Classics (the ‘good boys’) were not eager to socialize with me. I had difficulty making friends in the Classics crowd, except for one good Canadian friend I’m still in touch with. Now I (sort of) know why. My personal style oscillated between that of a hippie (handmade shawls and long skirts) and that of a party girl (short skirts, tight tops and high heels). I did my best to look attractive on a lamentably small budget but I failed to understand that I ended up sending mixed signals. Plus, I used unusual words when I spoke, which often amused people. Instead of saying “snowball fight”, I would say “a snow battle”, not to mention my curious translations of both Latin and Greek. I imagine my fellow students must have been laughing their heads off behind their notebooks when it was my turn to translate verse.  They didn’t know what to make of that eccentric European girl. Plus, my thesis was devoted to Sappho’s poetry… their confusion must have been total.

It’s going on my fifteenth reunion now. I seem to be more aware of the arena of politics and I rarely dress like a hippie or a party girl these days, though I like to dress with style. My faith is an important part of my life (just like it was back in college) and I still use some unusual words when I speak English  – or any language, for that matter. I don’t fancy any more “good boys” from the Classics department because I have an engineer husband by my side. He has no clue about The Iliad, and I don’t blame him.

Oh yes, and I’m busy trying to figure out what’s harder, squeezing four years of Dartmouth into three, or having three kids in four years…