Finding a boyfriend at Bowdoin is not the be all and end all

Katherine gives advice: How to make it through a Maine winter

Hello, precious readers! Take a look at this week’s column. “Dear Katherine, Do you have any advice on how to keep your spirits up during a long winter in Maine? Sincerely, Chilly in Chambo” Chilly, it’s coming for all of us. The first warning sign was on November 1 when daylight savings time ended and all of our lives got a little bit sadder. The next sign came last week, when I walked home in the dark at 4 p.m., entered my living room and found my housemate Jamie purposefully searching Amazon.
“What if we buy a house sun lamp?” he said. “Or, I don’t know, a tanning booth.”The tanning booth idea sounded to me—well—a little bit insane. What, I wondered as Jamie perused a user review of an in-home tanning booth, do other people do to keep their spirits up in the winter? Do they deal with it like reasonable humans? I decided, Chilly, to ask around for you while I was in Smith Union yesterday.
First, I ran into Hannah. “How do you cope with the winter?” I asked her as she sat opening a package.
“I wake up and I cry,” Hannah said. “Once it started snowing and I cried in the middle of class.” As she spoke, she waved around a half a mounted taxidermy squirrel she’d received in the mail.
When I asked how Skye would get through the winter, she got a frenetic look in her eye. “I’ve planned it all out. I’m never leaving the tower. I can eat there, I can shower there, I can exercise there—stairs!” she said.
Chilly—these anecdotes evidence that winter is coming and that, one way or another, it’s going to be ugly. And while the coping mechanisms described by the people I talked to are perfectly legitimate, I, your dear advice columnist, am going to recommend what I hope will be some slightly less desperate tactics:
1. Do not cry. If you do, your tears will freeze to your cheeks or perhaps even in your eyeballs.
2. Have a friendly snowball fight.
3. Learn some variety of winter sport. The outing club has Nordic skis, telemark skis and snowshoes. Go forth and get endorphin-high on exercise.
4. Remember that if we didn’t have winter, we wouldn’t have babies in snowsuits, and babies in snowsuits are the cutest thing on the entire planet.
5. Put on your vodka jacket. And your mulled wine jacket. Also put on your regular jacket, the one that is made of actual fabric and not just your impaired sensory capacities.
6. Eat foods with astronomical levels of carbs and fats in order to develop winter blubber. When in doubt, do as the artic mammals.
7. Look to the dead polar bear in that weird little hallway behind the gym for inspiration.8. Then visit the artic museum. Stare at the portraits of Donald B. MacMillan, another artic mammal. Think, “how can I become more like this famed polar bear murder?”
10. Layer. Wear every sweater you have when you leave the house. Steal your roommates’ sweaters and wear them as well. Collect sweaters from the gym and put them on too. Try to acquire all the sweaters. Soon, you will be the most powerful—soon you will rule them all.
11. Take stock of yourself. Wonder if you have perhaps started to go a little bit insane.
12. Count down the days until Ivies.
Happy winter!
Out,Katherine

Katherine gives advice: Breaking the barrier between art and craft

Hello, precious readers! I hope you all enjoyed cozy and under-stimulating winter breaks. I certainly did, and now I’m refreshed enough to write another semester’s worth of inane filler.
Before break, I received this question, punctuation unchanged:
“Dear Katherine,
How can I explain to my friends that Craft is Art!!! ?
Seriously,
Creative in Cram Alumni Barn”
Dear Creative,
First of all, amazing punctuation combination!!! ? Second of all, unknowingly, you have hit upon one of my current obsessions. Over the break, I learned to knit. Now I am a knitting freak. Picture me, in New Jersey, at 3 a.m., lying in bed surrounded by empty boxes of Milano cookies and slowly becoming so entangled in my yarn that I am eventually swallowed whole by my soon-to-be scarf. Or don’t, if you find that image vaguely disturbing. Point is, like it or not, I am one of you.
It sounds, though, like your friends do not understand. Your question implies that your friends’ distinction between Craft and Art vis à vis your work is purposefully denigrating and/or unconsciously dismissive. For that I am sorry! It sucks when the people you love don’t appreciate or value your passions. That’s like the lamest thing you can do as friend, short of eating one of your housemate’s leftover Indian food.
Here’s a list of ways to deal with your friends’ negativity.
1. Bully those who try to devalue your work.
Make the people who doubt you feel bad about themselves. This is the strategy I’ve adopted when someone questions the importance of, say, my English major. Whenever another person tells me that the study of reading or writing is frivolous, I start by saying “You would think that,” and then I ask them what their favorite book is, and then I tell them that it’s bad.*
2. Convince your friends that they are wrong/biased using smart facts/revisionist art history.
Say “Do you even know about Arts and Crafts movement in the British Isles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which advocated for a return to and appreciation of craftsmanship and folk art!!! ?” Never expound on this. You’re not totally sure what the Arts and Crafts movement is, actually. You just found it on Wikipedia a few minutes ago and read two lines before going to get your leftover Indian food, only to find that it has been eaten.
Yell about how the distinction between Craft and Art is sexist and euro-centric, and undervalues traditionally female crafts like fiber works and non-Western mediums and form.** Use the word “hegemony” at least twice, which, even if you do not win the debate, is a victory in and of itself.
3. Tell your friends that their dismissal hurts you, and tell them why.
This is like, very graceful and mature and probably how you should handle most grievances. Friends can be silly sometimes, and might need to be reminded that their opinions could be hurtful. You could also offer to show your friends how to do your craft. Often, people’s dismissal comes out of ignorance, and can be remedied with more exposure.
If all else fails, and there is no way of bullying/convincing your friends into sharing your love of craft, go to the Craft Center and make some new craft friends, so that you have people in your life who can celebrate craft without judgment. You deserve for your art to be taken seriously!
Out,
Katherine
*Just kidding.
** Real talk, though, I think this is true and important.

Katherine gives advice

Finding a boyfriend at Bowdoin is not the be all and end all

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Katherine Churchill

Columnist

December 11, 2015

Hello, precious readers!

Despite my explicitly expressed aversion to answering questions about love, I have received many. Thanks, jerks. Three of these inquired about how to find a sweetheart. See them combined below:

Dear Katherine,
“Where should I go to meet a lover? Teach me your ways, oh wise one.”
“My inability to get a sig other is hurting my school work. Help!”
“I've never dated someone at Bowdoin and I really want to. What's the best way to meet someone?”
Sincerely,
Singles in Studz

Now, look. I’ve already stated in an earlier column that love is a maverick and giving love advice is useless. But once again, at your request, here I go.

Our culture is full of metanarratives about what makes a person lovable, and those metanarratives are often false, misogynistic, heteronormative and like, super ineffective. Take, for instance, the movie “Grease.” When Sandy wears hot pants and smokes cigarettes to procure Danny’s love, we learn that by changing ourselves completely, we convince people to love us and also drive off in a flying car.

I’ve tried this, actually. Not the smoking and hot pants. The changing myself completely. It worked OK at first. I manipulated my high school lover into courting me through a flurry of crop tops and a feigned interest in “Entourage.” He then dumped me for another girl who had much higher self-esteem. Calmly accepting my heartbreak, I secretly threw that girl’s Uggs away during gym class*. There were no flying cars. I would call it a net loss.

Another love metanarrative we internalize is the myth that we will be happier in a relationship than we would be single no matter what. Instead of waiting to find a person we want to be with, we look for anyone to fill that self-made void, even if that person doesn’t fit it quite right.
I’ve done that too. In that relationship, we didn’t really like each other very much, which is kind of a prereq for a relationship. Besides, we were doomed from the beginning. The night after we started officially dating, my new boyfriend drunkenly peed on my slippers.

I remember laying in bed that night thinking “Is this how the rest of the relationship is going to go?” And it was. Picture three long months of him metaphorically pissing on my shoes.

You might be thinking by now that I wreak footwear-related havoc wherever I go. This is not untrue. But what I’m trying to identify is that you should fall in love with people that you love just the way they are, and who love you just the way you are right back.

So Singles in Studz, try to remember that having a significant other is like, super not the most important thing.** In fact, love for love’s sake almost always ends with a broken heart and too few good memories to redeem it. Don’t steep in your own loneliness.

Instead, I would revel in your singledom. I know this isn’t satisfying. But alas, there is no build-a-bear workshop for boyfriends or girlfriends or partners. Go out and be social and do the stuff you like, the way happy single people do. Chances are if you spend your time with Bowdoin students with similar interests/values/levels of athleticism, someone will catch your eye.
That’s what happened to me two years ago. We’re still very happy. No shoes have been destroyed. At least not yet.

Out,
Katherine

P.S.
I also received this question about love, which I feel morally obligated to answer:

“After exchanging numbers, in a hetero pairing, isn't it in the guy's court to ask to hang out first?”

For the love of god, sweetheart. NO.

*Chloe, if you’re reading this, I’m so sorry.

** The most important thing is, of course, Spicy Lentil Tacos at Thorne.

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