Johnson ’13 relishes Outing Club roles

Faculty chats: Aviva Briefel on ice cream, 'The Shining' and the Christmas rush

Even if you have never had a class with Professor of English and Cinema Studies Aviva Briefel, chances are you have seen her and her children lined up at Thorne’s Wednesday night sundae bar. Briefel specializes in Victorian literature and horror film. She is married to David Hecht, also a Bowdoin professor, who teaches in the history department.
Briefel, the daughter of a French father and Moroccan mother, was born in Paris. Her paternal grandmother fled to New York due to instability in France during World War II, so Briefel’s father was born in the United States. He eventually returned to Paris, however, where he met Briefel’s mother.
When Briefel was four years old and spoke no English, the family moved to New York City. “I was put in an American preschool,” Briefel explained, “and for the first month I had headaches and painted all the time. After that month of painting and headaches, I was speaking English fluently.”
The French language is important to Briefel—her children attend a French school in Freeport, and she enjoys watching French films.
“I like them because they feel very nostalgic to me,” she explained.
Growing up, Briefel spoke French with her parents but English with almost everyone else.In addition to her academic pursuits, Briefel likes viewing films outside the horror genre and reading contemporary fiction. Along with French films, she enjoys thrillers and comedies, but avoids rom-coms.
“Last weekend, I went to see ‘Gone Girl,’ and I feel it’s definitely a film that should be seen in the theater,” said Briefel. “That is one of my favorite things to do—sitting in the dark and watching films.”
Briefel described the joy of sharing films with her son now that he is old enough to go to the theater.
“The first time we watched ‘The Wizard of Oz’ together was one of the most amazing things,” she said.
At Brown University, where she got her undergraduate degree, Briefel discovered her love of horror film during an outdoor screening of “The Shining.” “It was on the campus green and put on by the film society. Before that I was really scared of [horror],” she admitted.
While in college, Briefel worked as a toy salesperson at FAO Schwarz. “It was fun but also really stressful during the holiday season,” she said. “I also did a lot of temping, answering phones and typing at different places; I liked that idea of exploring different environments. One of the weirdest things I did was in grad school, where I worked at a temping agency that was a dating service. It was pre-internet dating, and I was answering phones trying to get people to use the system. It was funny, and a new concept to date in that way, where people would record videos of themselves for others to view.”
While Briefel eventually went on to become a professor, she is confident that her top alternate career choice would have been stage acting. “I never did tons of theater, but I always had the dream to be acting on stage. Sometimes this dream is literal, and it often becomes an anxiety dream where I forget my line,” she laughingly. “I think teaching has a lot of performance to it; you are on stage in a weird way. I like that idea of being in front of a live audience.”
When asked what else students might not know about her, Briefel said, “The cheesy answer is that I love teaching, I thrive on that. But what else they might not know is that I don’t know how to ride a bike. I felt like after a time it was too late to learn. I have a friend that tried to learn as an adult and broke her leg immediately.”
Although cycling is not one of Briefel’s pastimes, she enjoys watching “Parks and Rec” and “Arrested Development,” as well as listening to her favorite Scottish indie band, Belle and Sebastian. Her favorite family activity is spending time around Bowdoin. “It’s a really great place to raise kids. They are so used to being on a college campus, and they think about it as a place where people work and people play. And of course we love the cafeteria—if there’s any ritual we have, it’s getting ice cream there.”

Faculty chats: Gov’s Henry Laurence talks bonds trading, shepherd’s pie and 'Downton Abbey'

Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies Henry Laurence prefaced his Oxford education with more than just a typical English prep school. He spent a year in between high school and college working on a container ship bound for Australia. This adventure was just the first of many in his life as he also worked in investment banking and ranched cattle.
Laurence grew up along the southern coast of England, frequently moving from town to town because his father was in the Royal Navy. For the most part, however, he was rooted in Goring, which “had the same feel as Brunswick—you could go to the shops and meet people to gossip.” He attended an all-male naval school before taking a gap year preceding college.
“Before I went to Oxford, I worked as a deckhand on a container ship and then I got my passage to Australia to work on sheep and cattle ranches,” said Laurence. “I was in the Indian Ocean de-rusting container lashings. That was a fantastic experience. I strongly recommend to people to take a year off.”
When he did return to Oxford, Laurence pursued studies in philosophy, politics and economics. At Bowdoin, he teaches in both the Government and Legal Studies and Asian Studies departments but he did not become involved with scholarship in the latter discipline until his post-graduate work.
“That’s one of the big differences between England and Bowdoin: in England you’re terribly specialized so there just wasn’t opportunity to study language or anything outside of your three A-levels, which is a shame.”
After graduation, Laurence spent time working for the Bank of Tokyo in London, which piqued his interest in the languages and politics of Asia and made him realize that a career in bond trading was not for him.
“Investment banking was huge amounts of fun. It was new and an intellectual challenge. This was [before] a lot of mechanization, and so there was kind of a human element at the time that was like a game. It was fun, but I don’t think it was very responsible.”
Now settled in his career as a Bowdoin professor, Laurence enjoys spending his free time watching the Premier League and following his favorite scheming character, Thomas, on Downton Abbey.
“I gave up on House of Cards because it doesn’t touch the original British one,” said Laurence. “I binge watched Breaking Bad though, and like Better Call Saul.”
Laurence is also something of a gourmand.
“I cook. It’s what I spend my time thinking and reading about,” he said. “Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is what I’d cook for myself on a desert island. And I’m getting really into Indian curries.”
His favorite Bowdoin meal?
“Shepherd’s pie, obviously,” he said. My greatest regret at Bowdoin, honestly, is that they serve up the shepherd’s pie with the eggplant parmesan and you just can’t do both. Well you can, but not in public.”
Laurence hopes one day to have a bronze statue of himself erected outside of Thorne to commemorate all the time he has spent there.
Although Laurence admits to cold-calling people in the classroom, he wants students to know that he does it to prepare them for the real world.
“It’s better to be uncomfortable now in class than later at work or in a town hall meeting,” he said. “Don’t take it personally. Where I came from, that is the standard, to be very confrontational and critical. It doesn’t matter what you think, it’s about the argument.”
Regarding other in-class practices, Laurence has been known to recount the dating misadventures of his youth in class.
“I had one student who kept a tally of my stories,” he said.
Unfortunately, Laurence declined to share any of these with the Orient.
Professor Laurence lives in Brunswick with his wife and children, who persuade him to Nordic ski and attend Arctic Monkeys concerts.

Faculty chats

Johnson ’13 relishes Outing Club roles

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Elena Britos

Columnist

February 5, 2015

Hannah Rafkin

BLAZING A TRAIL: Sarah Johnson ’13 works at the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) where she supervises the training of BOC trip leaders.

Some of Sarah Johnson’s most important work takes place off the Bowdoin campus, but still among the pines. Sarah “SJ” Johnson ’13 is one the Bowdoin Outing Club’s (BOC) two assistant directors and is responsible for the Leadership Training program that trains students to lead outdoor trips. While Johnson jumped straight from being an involved student member of the BOC to the position of assistant director after graduation, her path was never set in stone.

“By sophomore spring I had taken 16 classes in 15 departments,” said Johnson.

She eventually settled on a government and environmental studies coordinate major, but it is her passion for new experiences that made her a winning candidate for the assistant director position.

Johnson grew up in Gloucester, Mass., in a house that has been in her family for six generations, and feels a strong connection to her heritage. However, Johnson still loves adventuring far and wide.

Her mother’s family is from Minnesota and she grew up attending a family camp there. As she got older, she attended Camp Widjiwagan, an adventure camp that led her to the Arctic. Years later as a counselor she led the same expedition along the Coppermine River. It was at Camp Widjiwagan that Johnson developed her affinity for paddling, although she says she “learned everything else at Bowdoin.”

During her junior year Johnson participated in SEA Semester, an off-campus study program at sea.

“I loved being at the helm, especially when there were huge waves,” said Johnson. “When the ship dipped down and the waves were rising it was incredible.”
A lover of heights and adrenaline, Johnson does know her limits.

“I have never tried base jumping or anything like that. I’m very wary of pushing human limits beyond what your body really can do,” Johnson said. “I think a perception people have is that people in the Outing Club are really intense and can be intimidating, but I too, am afraid of many outdoor things.”

Her ability to balance exploration with healthy caution is one of the most essential skills in her job. She is responsible for instilling this same sense of balance in future leaders so they can make smart decisions.

At the conclusion of the Leadership Training program, Johnson leads groups of students into New England and sometimes Canada for their culminating expedition, leaving them largely to their own devices.

While Johnson devotes much of her time to planning and going on outdoor adventures, she has taken up wood burning—scorching words and images into driftwood and giving the pieces as gifts. She has also begun to play the mandolin, hopeful that one day she may be reunited with the on-campus band Jesus and The Kid.

Perhaps her favorite pastime, though, is hanging out with her friends in the Bowdoin community.

“I haven’t really thought about my life in quantifiable accomplishments, but I think I’ve made a lot of friends in a whole bunch of different settings,” said Johnson. “I’ve had a lot of really amazing people in my life, so I’m pretty proud of that,”.

When asked about her personal challenges, Johnson cited baking, cooking and anything that involves being “a details person.” However, her ability to ferry across and descend raging whitewater proves her mastery of precision in motion. Johnson also admits she has a fear of being elbowed in the face inside tents, but claims it is her only phobia.

On the topic of conquering fears, Johnson mentioned the film “Pretty Faces,” which was recently screened on campus. It is a film about female skiers and the challenges they face as they take on slopes over 5,000 feet high.

“There’s a scene where there’s this incredible face and this woman keeps chanting, ‘Conquer the fear; that’s why you’re here; conquer the fear; that’s why you’re here.’ And I think that’s a pretty cool message to take with you into whatever you’re afraid of,” said Johnson. “Conquering fear is hard, but it’s why we’re here—to try.”
Johnson will be assistant director for another year, but beyond that, she’d prefer to leave things uncharted.

“I appreciate the people doing the big picture work [in government and education]; we need those people, but I’ve discovered in Brunswick a wonderful community of people and I think that would be a wonderful way to spend life,” said Johnson “Maybe I’ll continue to walk down this road and try a model that focuses more on education than recreation, maybe a semester school. I’d like to keep my efforts local and within my community.”

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