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Best Four years: California dreamin': how a Bowdoin education prepared me for Hollywood
I’ve never had a dream job. I enjoy many things: books, travel, science, people—but my interests never conspired with a direction, never manifested themselves as an aspiration or career goal. My brothers were the opposite. Quinn wanted to be a Red Sox player and Ben wanted to be a rock star. Sure, as time passed, they adjusted their ambitions according to their capabilities, but their efforts still maintained a focus: Quinn is captain of the baseball team and can give you the height and weight of every professional athlete since the Nixon administration. Ben probably knows the chemical formula of the elixir they use to keep Keith Richards alive.
This past summer, I lived and worked in Hollywood, California. Most people go west to follow their dreams, but I went searching for one. Bowdoin’s curriculum does you a favor by exposing you to different disciplines and areas of study, but I wasn’t doing myself any favors by using “well-roundedness” as an excuse to procrastinate choosing what I wanted to do when I got older. Put to no good use, a liberal arts degree is a certificate in indecision.
I didn’t decide to go to Hollywood by spinning a globe and sticking my finger on a random place (although in the Hollywood version of my life, that’s what would have happened). The less dramatic truth was that I was sitting on my sofa last winter break, trying to find something to do over the summer, and all I could think was: I want to make stories and I want to work with others. I thought, “hey, isn’t that what they do on TV? Would I maybe enjoy working in entertainment? Can all the hours I spent watching The Office finally be justified as a meaningful use of my time?”
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Best Four years: Engaging with real world from inside the bubble
We’re familiar with the concept of the Bowdoin Bubble—Bowdoin isn’t just a school or community, but is its own universe. A closed, contained system, Bowdoin works hard to supply everything we need without us having to step off campus. We know where to eat, where to sleep and certainly where to drink. Bowdoin is a culture as much as an institution, thick with its own esoteric codes, rituals and customs.
When we return home, we have to translate our experiences in order to communicate. How many of us have generalized the dreamlike and debauched holiday that is Ivies to a less-enthused “Spring Weekend”? Described our proctors as “half-RA, half-dad”? Called Spring Gala, simply, “Prom at College”?
Bowdoin is its own world—and part of that is keeping the actual world out. We forget the Bowdoin Bubble also describes the sheltering effects of this campus. The smallest trips down the road merit the excitement of travel—who here as gone to Wild Oats or Little Dog because they “just needed to get away”? It feels like you should need a passport for a trip to Portland.
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Best Four years: Sophomore slump stems from our loss of freshman securities
Let’s talk about the sophomore slump.
It sounds like a spinal conditionor dance move at worst. Despite being the most prevalent association attached to sophomore year, I’ve never stumbled across a definition for the term. Sophomore slump is a catch-all term, something expansive to which we attribute all our sad, sorry sophomore feelings—it accumulates meaning by way of its vagueness. That girl sleeping with her eyes open in Smith Union? Sophomore slump. That existential feeling of emptiness when you walk into a mid-February College House party? Slump-related. Declaring your major? Slumpy.
Sophomores: welcome to the worst, best year of your life.
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Best Four years: Family debate sparks understanding of liberal arts’ benefits
In the three days that I was home over Spring Break, I made the rounds. Besides spending quality time with the parents (dinner, “Argo”), there was my grandma, sister, niece, nephew, and finally, my grandpa.
My grandpa is not always an easy man to spend time with. He runs a dog sitting business and, at any given moment, has up to thirteen drooling guests chasing him around his house. Visiting grandpa means that you will leave with a second coat: one made of dog hair. Grandpa tends to be very opinionated, and lectures without much patience for disagreement. As sweet and well-meaning as he is, his company is often barbed with frequent criticisms.
When I was younger, I often dismissed what I considered to be an unceasing spew of convictions. But recently, I’ve realized that most of what he says is pretty intelligent, or at least well argued and well articulated. And although I may not always agree with him, I’ve come to appreciate his provocations. And at our lunch together over break, Grandpa proposed an idea that I spent quite a deal of time mulling over as I made the trip back up to school.