Leaving the Bowdoin bubble: Fall Break, baths and different space

The 'Artists' Are present: Invasion of the NARPs: exercising our privilege to use the gym

There’s a lot of talk about the gym at Bowdoin. About making ourselves go, how much we lifted, how bros don’t let bros skip leg day. How we can eat this slice of Tollhouse pie because we worked out for half an hour this morning. There’s a lot of worry about the gym. Will the guy next to me on the stationary bike judge me for going more slowly than he is? Will people stare at my butt if I wear these leggings? Am I allowed to go to the bottom level or is it reserved for big dudes with Gatorade water bottles?
We ritualize the gym—or more precisely, how we interact with the space. To whatever extent we are aware of them, our decisions about the gym are calculated. We choose when we go, who—if anyone—we go with, what we wear and what we do there. We feel on display in the gym. We compare ourselves to our peers in the gym. Sometimes the gym can serve as a magnifying glass to point out those physical attributes we most dislike about ourselves. It takes our fears about appearing unglamorous and incompetent and thrusts them into public view, in a tight space. It’s a stressful kind of intimacy.
We went to the gym at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday. Neither of us had been all year. Which is not to say that we are fully stationary beings: Carly plays on the women’s ultimate frisbee team and Tessa enjoys long strolls (NARP). We at least hoped to avoid the gym before the ground froze over, but alas, duty calls.
This idea has been a long time in the making. Carly suggested the gym plan day one of this semester, and Tessa was physically repulsed. In the minutes leading up to our gym excursion, she frantically texted Carly:
“Literally what do I wear?”
“I’m gonna wear tennis shoes and leggings and a t-shirt.”
“Relax dude.”
“Solidarity.”
“Yay.”
“See you shortly.”
In retrospect, it’s striking that Tessa felt the need to ask for advice. Shouldn’t everyone feel like they can go to the gym on their own terms, without anxiety about feeling out of place?We started off easy, on the main level. Carly showed Tessa how to use a foam roller. Needless to say, her quads loved it. Amidst our stretch-n-gossip session, we ran into the issue of interacting with people we know in the gym setting. Everyone is in his or her zone, or is trying to be—there are a lot of earbuds and intentional perspiration. Navigating social boundaries feels different.
We ventured downstairs. What we expected to be a roiling, subterranean grunt-fest was in fact a gleaming facility filled with dazzling amenities. The kettle bells had names like “Elegance” and “Pride.” There was a helpful infographic detailing where we could appropriately spit, or not spit (spoiler alert: the recycling bin is not a proper spit receptacle). Rather than the expected, intimidating pump-up music, we were met by some welcoming 80’s female rock tunes.
We should acknowledge here that the lower level was pretty empty. We felt free to putz around, making multiple laps of the space. We picked up some things, we poked at others. We did not have an exercise agenda, and we did not push our physical limits. What was important to us was entering this space that felt foreign and stigmatized.
On the whole, we enjoyed our little jaunt in the gym. Tessa confirmed that she could do at least one single pushup. Carly tested the waters of a career in personal training. Honestly, though, it was anticlimactic. Coming in with our peers’ stories of weird gym experiences, we expected a cringeworthy afternoon. A lot of factors contributed to our having a good time: the gym was quiet, we were there together and we had no specific goals in mind. If any of these factors had been different, we probably would not have had as much fun.

The 'Artists' Are present

Leaving the Bowdoin bubble: Fall Break, baths and different space

Carly Berlin

Columnist

Tessa Westfall

Columnist

October 16, 2015

The beginning of the year is always saturated. Like us, you may have become illiterate over the summer, and reading is hard. Maybe your friendships are in transition, or maybe this is your first time living away from home. Fall Break is a time set aside for some undefined purpose (shoutout to Tim Foster—we’re not complaining), but however you spend it, this break is a marker in time.

In our column, we typically focus on inhabiting and challenging spaces at Bowdoin. For a special Fall Break edition, we neither inhabited Bowdoin spaces nor challenged much of anything. Instead, we took advantage of time away to reflect on how we’ve grown since last Fall Break and how Bowdoin has influenced that growth.

In retrospect, the first five weeks of our Bowdoin experiences were spent largely in tears. Our friendship began on a Friday night spent drinking tea and watching “30 Rock” on the first floor of Winthrop, hesitantly confessing to each other how weird college felt. Fall Break was the first milestone we were running towards. We were floating in the Bowdoin bubble, rather than grounded in it; we felt entirely blinded to the world outside by a space where we didn’t feel settled yet.

When Fall Break hit, emergency getaways were effective immediately. Tessa, reeling from bicoastal culture shock, needed to see a family member before she spontaneously combusted. The trek home to Los Angeles was just not doable. Luckily, a family friend swooped in with a ticket to Toronto, where Tessa spent the break with her brother. It was reassuring to see someone with whom Tessa had more than a month of context and who also understood how foreign Sperrys look.

Carly had given her plans more forethought. She and her high school boyfriend had set aside this time as their first reunion after leaving for college. Full disclosure: there is something supremely romantic about riding a bus through New England fall. A short stop in Boston was jarring. Carly was surprised at how unaccustomed she felt to city noises and strangers. She was elated to see her boyfriend, but the two soon realized the new challenge at hand. A relationship that had always been rooted at home had now become mobile, and Carly and her boyfriend had to reconcile their disparate spaces.

We’d like to think Fall Break last year was clarifying, but we can’t remember if it was. We needed that time away, but it probably felt too short; it was probably hard to come back to Bowdoin. Regardless, Fall Break became a timestamp that broke up our developing routines. We’re lucky to say that things went up from there. A big leap outside the bubble reminded us that we don’t stop existing off campus.

We don’t find ourselves needing that reminder anymore, at least not in the same way.
Going away used to help us confirm who we were. Now, being outside of Bowdoin makes us grateful for the directions in which we’ve grown here. A year has stretched us, has pushed us, has shown us we can feel empty at some times and overflowing at others. And that’s OK.
This year for fall break, we indulged in our Bowdoin relationships. In the spirit of our favorite Onion article, we, with a group of our female friends, spent a raucous night validating the living shit out of each other. A log cabin in northern Maine saw many heart-to-hearts, collective dinner-making and multiple stress-relieving baths.

What struck us about this time was our lack of urgency to get away from not just Bowdoin, but Bowdoin people. Our outside lives and our Bowdoin lives have swirled together, and now being away from campus doesn’t feel groundbreaking. We have taken root at Bowdoin, but we’ve realized that the layers of our lives can be fixed to multiple places at once. Some might say we are “at home in all lands.”

At Bowdoin, we’re empowering ourselves to have complex identities. You can be the squirrel with the messed-up tail and you can be Connie. Part of growing is letting seemingly contradictory aspects of ourselves exist at the same time. We’ve found that Bowdoin—and the relationships that we have here—give us that space.

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