A Reflective Overview of my Years at Kalamazoo College

     I'm originally from Corvallis, Oregon. A place far, far away, that few people in Michigan have heard of. Heck, most people in Michigan can't even pronounce the name of the state correctly. The first question I always get is, "Why did you come way out here to go to school??" The logical answer is that both of my parents went to K. This usually satisfies people. But it isn't the real answer. I'd lived in Corvallis, a university town of 40,000, all my life. I wanted to see new places, meet new people. My original plan was to go to Smith College, a women's college in Massachusetts. But Kalamazoo held a special place in my heart, so when my grant fell through, I came here.

    I came to Kalamazoo hoping to find things out about myself. I was a first-year with no earthly clue about what I wanted to study. I knew I like languages and was pretty good at them—I'd become fluent in Spanish after living in Spain for a year between high school and college—so I decided to take Chinese. I took a history class from Dr. David Barclay upon the recommendation of my counselor, along with my first-choice first-year seminar, Campaign '96. I won a small part in the fall play, Joe Hill, joined the student-run improvisational comedy troupe, Monkapult, and generally had a blast. When I think back, I probably had the most fun of my life freshman year. I went out just about every weekend, became friends with a bunch of cool upperclassmen, as well as making many friends in my own class. I started what would turn out to be a three-year relationship with a senior, Colin. Yet, though I had a lot of fun, something was missing. Many of my friends were casual ones. I dreaded graduation that year, which meant the disappearance of my senior friends from my life, as well as a parting of ways for my boyfriend and me. And going into my sophomore year, I still had no idea what I wanted to major in, let alone what I wanted to do with my life.

    The summer after my first year at Kalamazoo was probably the most depressing time of my life. I went home and, after great difficulties, finally found a job in July at a restaurant one town over. I was a hostess, which meant I spent many boring hours dusting the displays and waiting for customers to break up the monotony. I made minimum wage with no tips. My parents moved to Richland, Washington after I graduated from high school, so I wasn't even in my hometown. I knew no one in my parents' new town, which was much smaller and definitely less cool that my hometown. Richland is near the Hanford Nuclear Site, where plutonium was refined for the atomic bombs the U.S. used against Japan in World War II. It's a conservative town with a scary past. Anyway, I was able to save a little money, and at the end of the summer my boyfriend came to visit. Unfortunately, he made far from the best impression on my parents. Oh well, I thought. Soon I'll be back in Kalamazoo, where I can do what I please . . .

    Back in Kalamazoo for my sophomore year, I found that many things had changed. I was still living with my first-year roommate, Felicity, but in a somewhat smaller room on the fourth floor of Dewaters Hall. Megan, our friend and compatriot, was also our bath-mate. We were all in the fall main-stage show again, with a new acting professor, Adrianne Krstansky. We loved her style and thought her an excellent choice for the department, which had been without a steady acting coach for the past year. Megan and I both had boyfriends living in Chicago, while Felicity kept up with her St. Louis high school sweetheart. Long distance relationships are hard, and we all dealt with loneliness and doubt from time to time. That Fall I took Intro to Sociology with Dr. Kim Cummings. I loved everything about that class. I had thought about being a Religion major after a good experience with Intro to the New Testament, but now I knew that Sociology was what I wanted to study. I declared the major Winter quarter, along with a minor in Theatre Arts and Communication. I was still involved with Monkapult, and during Fall quarter helped teach improv to interested first-years. Sophomore slump was real, but we got through it. In the Spring I applied to numerous internships all over the country—I knew I did not want to go home again for another long, boring summer! None of the internships I applied for panned out, but at the last second I heard, from my dad, of a job with AFS Intercultural Programs in Miami. When I called, they said the position had been filled, but that there were still vacancies in New York City. I won an internship with the Department of Intercultural Education at AFS headquarters. I was on my way to New York City!

     After a great summer in New York, I was ready for my next adventure—Caceres, Spain. I chose to go back to Spain for my semester abroad in order to solidify my Spanish skills, and because I thought that I really loved Spain and Spanish culture. Well, foreign study turned out to be one of the hardest things I've ever done. I had to fight to be allowed to take more challenging classes, as I was already fluent. I got along with my host sister, but didn't have that extensive of a support network otherwise. Colin and I were still trying to be a couple, but it was doubly hard now that we could only talk once every two weeks or so, and he wasn't good at writing letters. My parents came for Christmas, and we traveled to Madrid, Barcelona, and Castellon to visit my former host family and the family of a Spanish student my parents had hosted. Vacation was fun, but exhausting. I had to translate everything! Back in Caceres, I was lonely. I had trouble making Spanish friends. I was relieved when school finished, yet nostalgic. I had done observations at a Spanish high school and did a small study of the Spanish system of education. After presenting my findings, I was free. Brooke, Heather and I took off to see Europe, visiting Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, Greece, Italy, and the South of France. And that extra class I took that they all said I would fail? I got an A. All in all, I'm glad I went on foreign study, though in some ways I was relieved to be home. I had great experiences I'll never forget, both in Spain and in the cities we visited in the rest of Europe. I regained my former fluency in Spanish, which has helped me to get jobs. Still, sometimes I wish I'd looked at other places, that I'd been more adventurous, that I'd thought about Egypt or Denmark. ¡Qué será, será!

    The spring quarter of my Junior year was a very busy time. I costumed Sisters and Survivors, two student-directed one-acts. I was in Chamber Choir, a selective group of singers, as I had been for most of the two previous years. I was in Monkapult again and held a job as a web designer and programmer for the Kalamazoo College Help Desk web site. Formerly I'd worked as a lowly lab assistant—a cushy job where you can do your homework while you work. But not this job—this was eight hours a week of serious work. I was taking the Junior seminar for my major as well as Directing I, a demanding theatre class. These two classes were among the best that I took here at K, but boy, was I swamped with work. The strain showed in my personal relationships, which had changed drastically upon returning to K. I didn't know the first-years, barely remembered some of the seniors, and spent much of my time catching up with everyone else. We all dreaded the question: "So . . . how was foreign study?" I roomed with Megan in an RA suite made up of Junior leftovers with nowhere to live. Megan and I plotted, with Felicity and her roommate Emily, how to get off-campus housing for our senior year. We finally secured a house to rent that was very close to campus, and through a very trying process found people to live in it over the summer. I planned my Senior Individualized Project, or "SIP," which was a research project entitled "Feminism and Popular Culture: How 1990s Feminism Has Affected Television and Film." I decided to stay in Kalamazoo to do the research part in an attempt to revive what turned out to be a fatally flawed relationship with my long-time boyfriend, and also to help us secure the rented house. My friends were scattered all over, for the most part doing their SIPs—Megan in Chicago, Felicity in Flint, Emily living on campus, Eric in Oklahoma. I found a job as a research assistant with the Convening the Community project. I did transcribing and helped run focus group interviews, a good learning experience for my chosen field. Doing my SIP was hard work, one of the hardest things I've ever had to make myself do. No matter what kind it is, and no matter how interesting, the body just doesn't want to do work. In the end my hard work paid off, and I received an Honors grade on my SIP. Yay for me! I killed time searching for jobs for after graduation and corresponding with Eric, who had troubles of his own with the Oklahomans.

    After spending the final month of summer at home with my folks finishing up my research, I returned to Kalamazoo ready for Senior year. I had lined up a position as one of two Assistant Directors for the Fall play, the classical Spanish work Fuente Ovejuna, as well as a slot as director of a one-act play for the student directing series in the Dungeon black-box theatre. In the Fall I finished writing up my SIP, an effort for which I received an Honors grade. Colin and I were invited to the wedding of some mutual friends, after which we decided to just be friends. Seeing Annie and Tom ready to spend the rest of their lives together made us realize that we weren't willing to make that kind of a commitment to each other. Several weeks later I started dating Eric. At the end of the quarter I was asked to interview with Teach for America, an Americorps-affiliated program that sends teachers to under-resourced schools in urban and rural areas across the nation. The interview—for which I bought a suit—went extremely well, and I was offered a position teaching bilingual Spanish/English at an elementary level in the San Francisco Bay Area. I finally had a plan for after graduation! I was going back West. I was definitely ready for that!

    In the winter I directed my play, Tough Choices for the New Century: A Seminar for Responsible Living. It was a great experience. I must say I did an excellent job of casting, because we all got along, got it together, and put on a great show. Tough Choices is a comedy set up as a mock seminar on how to survive natural disasters. Up on stage, however, the presenters go through a crisis of their own, and hilarity, of course, ensues. At heart, however, it's a commentary on modern society and its violent tendencies. My show went up along with Joe St. Jean's production of The Serpent. We both garnered rave reviews and full houses. Still, winter quarter was tough. I was taking my Senior Seminar and, at the end of the quarter, suffered through comprehensive exams. I really bonded with my fellow Sociology/Anthropology majors, and we helped each other get through the various pains of class, professors, and exams. I ended up receiving Honors on my comps as well, meaning a good shot at Honors recognition in the major. My relationships with my three housemates were especially important to me as I made my way through the muck of the play and of comps. We were there for each other with shared "family dinners" and late-night talks. And Eric was always there to walk me home, make me a cheese sandwich, or watch a brainless movie with.

    As I face the end of my final spring quarter here at Kalamazoo College, I feel proud of all I have accomplished. I'm graduating on time, I've presented my SIP at a poster presentation at the Hightower Symposium, and this quarter I've been able to get out in the community with Dr. Cummings' Neighborhood Organizing Practicum, helping lower-income neighborhoods to fix up their houses. I'm really enjoying Design I, the final class I need to get my minor in Theatre. I rejoined Monkapult and am having a lot of fun performing again. We did a show in Chicago as well as one in the Dungeon a few weeks ago. I have a job lined up, and I'm getting really excited about teaching. Best of all, Eric, my favorite person in the world, is coming with me to San Francisco. The most important things I think I've gained from my years at K have been a willingness to work hard, flexibility, and the friendships I've made. I feel ready to take the next step. Now all I have to worry about is paying back those loans . . .
 

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