Contributors
All articles
-
Doublethink: Your Ivies horoscope
In this, our last column of the year, we tinkered with the idea of writing something sentimental: something about the ephemerality of transitions, and how this temporal space affords us pause to feel our feelings. But then, Tessa got snubbed by Polaris, Carly got the stomach flu and it snowed. So we decided to go in a different direction.
Looking forward to the weekend that is sure to be our Bowdoin social peak (fingers crossed), we couldn’t take any chances. We turned to the hard sciences for guidance. Respected for millennia by ancient Mesopotamians, Shakespeare and Neil DeGrasse Tyson alike, our choice was clear.
Astrology. We raked through the Bowdoin archives and found pages of zodiac forecasts dating back to 1865, the year our fine Ivies tradition commenced. Just as the Ancient Mayans predicted the world’s end in 2012, so too does this Star Chart provide promising insights into Ivies 2016.
Read your own, read them all. We humbly report: Ivies Horoscopes.
Aries (March 21-April 19)In the event that a travelling performer who abstains from milk of cow appears on campus, heed his call to “Go Hard in the MotherF***ing Paint.” As the sun in the sky sets, the sun beneath your feet will appear to enliven your dancing spirit.
Taurus (April 20-May 20)The gravitational pull of powerful Pluto will find you unexpected romance. Ivies Bae could be for now or could be forever, but beware the Winds of Finality blowing from the East: they could strain this cosmic pairing.
Gemini (May 21-June 20)While passion might tickle the pink cheeks of Taurus, beware, Gemini! Venus is setting for you this week. Instead of falling in love, you are likely to fall into the beckoning arms of Somnus, keeper of sleep. Be sure not to nap in an unseasonable snow bank.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)Searching of sustenance in the form of cylindrical meat products, venture to the land beyond the graves. Neptune will kindly cast an umbra to guide your path.
Leo (July 23-August 22)Jupiter’s moons stumble out of alignment for you, Leo. You have spent weeks agonizing over the perfect Brunswick Quad ensemble, yet alas! Best laid plans run amok. Embrace your zodiac lion heart and rally.
Virgo (August 23-September 22)Congratulations, Virgo! Juno, queen of the gods, will spot you losing steam from her perch on a passing asteroid and leave you a gift. One bottle of Andre will hold her Elixir of Stamina for you and you alone--your only challenge is to find it.
Libra (September 23-October 22)Allow the balance inherent to your star sign guide you over the course of this emotionally fraught weekend. Step on glass and make a friend. Shed a tear and have a laugh. Everything that goes in, must come out again. This you know.
Scorpio (October 23-November 21)Lillith, the most powerful energy vortex in the Sun-Earth-Moon system, will cause illusions to your vision. Scorpio, you may believe that a tiny Danish hipster sings before you, but have the strength to resist this trickiness.
Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)In a shocking twist of fate brought on by mischievous Mercury, your elders decide to pop in for a surprise visit this weekend. Be sure to remind them that you are not only studious, but fun.
Capricorn (December 22-January 19)Lucky Capricorn will discover an inestimable boon! The convergence of shooting stars in your sign will drop a fanny pack filled with snacks on your doorstep. Be grateful, be decisive.
Aquarius (January 20-February 18)Aquarius, while under the spell of solstice, your hubris gets the better of you. You commit a bit too hard to dancing during the guttural Earthsound musical festivities. By moonlight, take care of yourself.
Pisces (February 19-March 20)The ever-present swirling of the planets becomes too much for the muddled Pisces. In attempt to keep up with concentric rotations of the Earth and of the party, you will accidentally perform a séance. Fortunately, the ghosts of Donald B. MacMillan and Thomas B. Reed are in high spirits. Offer them a drink and enjoy the weekend.
-
Doublethink: When our bodies force us to stop
Sometimes it feels like everyone at Bowdoin is slightly under the weather. Maybe it’s something about the vaguely sticky chairs in the Union or snagging bites of vegan sin city off our sneezing friend’s plates. We tend to collectively hover at a level of not-quite-healthy-but-still-functional. Both of our Jewish mothers would be appalled at the volume of sniffles and coughs in the classroom.
We have both fallen below the functional threshold in the past year. Last week, Carly went on brain rest for a concussion she got playing frisbee. Last semester, Tessa was bedridden for two weeks with a nasty case of mono. Both of us were rendered useless for solid chunks of time.At first, being really sick at Bowdoin can feel like playing school-sponsored hooky. Our professors tell us to rest! To not worry about upcoming assignments! We got to experience Bowdoin with the veil of responsibilities magically lifted off of us. In those first moments of uninhibited lounging, it was all Otter Pops and David Sedaris audiobooks. The world transformed into a cozy, if a bit foggy, luxury.
But the fog settled in real quick. What started as a fun break from reality soon became long hours in our dimly lit rooms, feeling awkward about asking our friends to bring us nourishment and missing our aforementioned mommies. We got lonely. We got frustrated. We were mad at our bodies for not letting us participate.
Having a concussion, having mono, having anything that keeps us away from day-to-day life for a sustained time, takes a mental toll. We could deal with being lonely—an en masse text announcing “open office hours” and bricking our doors would remedy our woes. We could deal with being frustrated—we’re both lucky enough to have emotional outlets to help calm us down. To an extent, we could deal with being mad at our bodies because deep down we trust modern medicine enough to intellectually justify rest. The barb that snagged us was not being able to think. Not remembering, not making connections, not tracking conversation as we normally could was entirely destabilizing. Losing our cognitive ability made us feel inhuman. Our normal process for understanding the world was slowed down, put on hold.
It’s easy as college students to believe that our bodies are infallible. We’re constantly able to push our physical limits—we stay up late, party hard, wake up the next day to write a paper. And so on. Being sick, like we were, is a rude awakening. It reminds us that our bodies can betray us, and that’s terrifying.
In our darkest hours, the two of us were convinced that we would never heal. Against all odds, sleep, vitamins, fuzzy blankets and time returned us to our normal selves. Being incapacitated also provided space for our friends to show how they care for us. We each felt the Bowdoin community stepping in, coming to us when we were not able to engage. And we got better.
-
Doublethink: Bringing Bowdoin to our homes
Three thousand miles west of here, the Bowdoin College Meddiebempsters spilled out of minivans in the driveway of Tessa Westfall’s Los Angeles home. Burnt to a crisp from their day at Santa Monica Beach, they threw off their vacation wear with reckless abandon and jumped into the pool. Tessa’s mom wasted no time describing how the pool is neither chlorine nor saline, but rather EcoSmart, while simultaneously dishing out piles of organic snacks. The Meddies ogled as she fed the subpar veggies to the pet desert tortoises, Kippy and Lightning.Approaching one thousand miles south of here, Carly Berlin hurtled toward Myrtle Beach, S.C. (affectionately known as “Savannah”) with Bowdoin’s ultimate frisbee teams. While the destination wasn’t Carly’s home, she did feel like a token Southerner. She couldn’t help cringing at the abundance of overbearing “Jesus Is Your Savior” and cartoonishly racist “South of the Border Restaurant” billboards. Her car stopped at a Waffle House off the highway somewhere in North Carolina, a place nondescript to her, but to them a novelty where they could order their hash browns “Scattered, Smothered and Covered.”
It’s surreal having people from Bowdoin in our home spaces. Maybe it feels weird for everyone to have the two worlds intertwined. We suspect, though, that coming from far corners of the country makes this experience more pronounced. The presence of Bowdoin guests in our regions provokes us to be critical of where we come from. It heightens our awareness of the background noise of our locales, of the freckles on our own faces.
The two of us hail from places that don’t exactly have flawless reputations on the national stage. Let’s explore this through a fun word association game. Carly, what comes to mind when you think of LA?
Superficiality, road rage, intricate Starbucks orders, Valley Girl upspeak, hippies who shave everything, putting on a full face of makeup to go to your afternoon SoulCycle, class cancellation due to light drizzle, people trying to find themselves, having Jared Leto stare at your butt while on a hike under the Hollywood Sign, etc.
Tessa, what comes to mind when you think of the South?
Sweet tea, “family values,” debutante balls, “Bless your sweet little heart,” Honey Boo Boo, “The War of Northern Aggression,” fried everything, “The bigger the hair the closer to God,” conservatism, chauvinism, racism, etc.
These characteristics are far from representative, but we admit, a lot of them are true. They’ve certainly shaped the landscapes that we grew up in. The truth to them crystallized when we were presented with a whole new landscape: New England.
We were shocked! Tessa was visually stunned by the throngs of 18-year-olds wearing khakis and pastel Polos. Carly had never before met someone from a “town.” Tessa had previously believed that boarding schools only existed in 19th-century Britain or contemporary Utah, where rich LA kids were “sent away.” The whiteness of Maine struck both of us. Physical toughness in the face of the elements (and accompanying lumberjack aesthetic) as a cultural value was totally foreign. In our second year here, much has become familiar. It’s an ongoing process, though—Carly still hasn’t sprung for an E-ZPass in her car.
We’ve experienced people responding with surprise or throwing shade when they hear where we’re from. Having to own and defend our home places has given us more clarity in looking at them. It’s a process towards making sense of and accepting the places that have shaped us, in spite of and because of their deep flaws.
For the whole first part of our lives, a large piece of how we understand the people around us is through their personal context—what the buildings in their neighborhood feel like, the smell of their house, the food their family eats for dinner. In college, everyone’s immediate context is the same. We’re given a whole new kind of agency in defining ourselves, based on our behavior, our interests, our ideas. That being said, there’s something really gratifying about showing people from Bowdoin our backstories.
-
Doublethink: Letting go of FOMO; facing Bowdoin’s pressure to always ‘be on’
Put yourself in the Union at 10 on a Tuesday morning. How many people do you make meaningful eye contact with as you walk up the stairs? As you’re waiting in line for your coffee, are you smiling? Waving? Bantering? Staring at your phone avoiding these social interactions? Are you running through your to-do list for the day? Are you taking stock of your body? Is any of this conscious?
All of the labor that goes into moving about the world at Bowdoin amounts to a pressure to always “be on” here. Being on means everything but down time, everything but being alone, everything but being off. There is always another person to talk to and party to go to and new friend to make. We’re tempted by the fantasy of never needing to sleep, of reclaiming the six to eight lost hours imbued with possibility. Being on is about living in a community where we are constantly presenting ourselves to each other. That presentation is an active process. Our social worlds here are relentless.
So we had an idea: what would happen if we tried to quantify our social interactions? Coming off of five weeks of hanging out at home, going long stretches of only talking to our moms, the constant barrage of Bowdoin Hellos was a shock to our systems. Amidst our February woes, the contrast between home life and Bowdoin life felt particularly pronounced. Our goal in keeping track of the Bowdoin social web was to figure out the scale we deal with. We decided to log our social interactions with the highly scientific method of scribbling tallies on folded papers. Cut to: Tessa newly craving a pocket protector for her denim button-down. We used four categories: hellos to strangers, acquaintances and friends, with longer conversations in a bracket of their own. Cut to: us disrupting normal human contact with the slick interjection, “Shit, I need to record this.”
We anticipated the hubs of first floor H-L and the Moulton Light Room. But we discovered that our social realms expanded to almost everywhere. Carly went on a run through town and racked up four hellos to Bowdoin acquaintances and two to friends. Tessa found the Union bathroom to be a real hotspot for conversation. Even in places where we expected to be alone, there were people. We felt compelled to talk to these people—even the ones we didn’t know. Our arbitrary distinctions between stranger, acquaintance and friend made us consider how in no other setting are these boundaries so blurred. What constitutes a friend? Someone whose phone number we have? That we pause to talk to? A Facebook friend? These questions came to light as we struggled to categorize the people in our lives. It felt weird. It felt weird to explain our tallies to people. It feels weird to acknowledge it now.
We planned to do this for a week. We failed miserably. Two days of data that would never pass an Institutional Review Board left us wiped out. We felt exhausted for a couple reasons: the mental task of remembering to do something that’s entirely unnatural proved taxing. And while looking at our tallies at the ends of these days, we were astounded by the volume of interactions we had. Overall, Bowdoin Hellos won, but longer conversations had more than any discrete category. It was striking to see the emotional labor of a single day at Bowdoin laid out tangibly in front of us.
Reality check: our assertion is not that we’re Regina George, basking in our own popularity. Though we realize it’s not universal, we believe that ceaseless social interaction is a shared feature of Bowdoin life for many students here. That’s why we talk about FOMO all the time—it wouldn’t be so prominent in our discourse if we didn’t have the precedent of constant connection. Sometimes we feel that we can take on our social worlds here, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes they’re really daunting. Yet when we extract ourselves from the web, we often feel compelled to justify our decision. “I didn’t go to x party because a) I had some shit to get done, b) I’m sick, or the intentionally vague, c) I needed to self-care.” Very rarely: “I was doing nothing.” Almost never: “I didn’t want to.”
So we fear being off, missing out, not looking like we’ve got it all together. But Bowdoin is a more forgiving place than we give it credit for being. Don’t we spend so much time talking to people that we don’t really know? Doesn’t this speak to a level of warmth and openness in our community? Quantifying our interactions also made us aware of their quality. And although the amount of our interactions startled us, the overall substance of them reminded us that we’re surrounded by special people here. We think that no one is really, truly going to judge us harshly for opting out of the web. We’re allowed to extract ourselves, to take breaks. We can trust that the interactions we do have are valuable without constantly focusing on the ones we’re not having.
Put yourself in the Union, or in the library, or at Cold War, or wherever you are right now. Is it where you want to be?
-
Doublethink: A word on hovering
We learn campus culture quickly at Bowdoin. In our initial weeks as first years, we learn to go trayless in the dining halls; that the sporty folks go to Baxter and the crunchy folks to Reed; that it’s socially acceptable to cry at an a cappella concert. In the intimate community of the College, we are given a lot of agency in shaping what life feels like here. This doesn’t always seem like the case, though. There are times when the power of the administration explicitly manifests itself. Sometimes, we agree with the steps taken. We think it’s good that ResLife knows when and where parties are happening because it keeps us safe. We’re glad that the College provides spaces that allow us to come together and explore identity, like the Women’s Resource Center and Russwurm House and 30 College. And yet there are times when it feels like the administration gets it wrong—when it hovers too close. These are opportunities for us, as students, to play a part in dictating our campus’ dynamics.
Two Sundays ago, all sophomores were expected to attend a one-hour meeting intended to “help [us] make the most of [our] experience[s] at Bowdoin, and beyond.” Gathered in Pickard, administrators talked at us from the stage about the “invisible internship network” and “keys to success” and “how to best use extra time.” Amidst calls to “stand up if your parent is a doctor or a lawyer” and “raise your hand if you play a sport,” we found ourselves most frustrated with the sense that each decision we make now ought to lead to some nebulous, lucrative future. We are already inundated with emails about major declaration and study abroad deadlines. This meeting rested on the assumption that we are oblivious to these once looming, now pressing decisions before us. The reality is, we have five semesters left at Bowdoin. We wanted to hear: “enjoy this time;” “be present;” “foster meaningful relationships;” “pursue what you’re passionate about.” Instead we heard: “networking is not a dirty word;” “make connections for the future;” “win the opportunity.” The take away is that our time here is simply a stepping stone for achieving a high powered career with high donating potential. Not that our time here is valuable in and of itself, or that we should do what we love and lead fulfilling lives. We want to acknowledge that this meeting very well could’ve been helpful for some members of our class, but we have yet to talk to someone that feels this way.
The All Sophomore Meeting was indicative of the type of person that Bowdoin—at least a part of it—aims to produce. To us, this felt like undue pressure from the College, and attitude management. It depends on a conventional notion of what it means to do well, to be successful. And we’re seeing that these notions don’t just stop at the institutional level. They also bleed into the deeply personal.
This week, we’ve witnessed an uproar from students surrounding Bowdoin’s policy on pornography. Yik Yak was flooded with lamentations of the death of porn at Bowdoin. In an email to the campus community about a new network security system, we were told that “Websites known to be infected or distributing malware and those categorized as high-risk—including pornography and gambling sites—are flagged” and that IT security officers will review our web activity (i.e. our use of these flagged sites) to “secure the campus network and technology.” OK, fine. We all want a secure network. Tessa is frankly still hurting from last year’s phishing fiasco. We dug deeper, though, and discovered that Bowdoin does in fact prohibit the use of pornography on grounds divorced from campus safety. The IT website states: “Use of the College’s computers, network or electronic communication facilities [...] to send, view or download fraudulent, harassing, obscene (i.e. pornographic), threatening, or other messages or material that are a violation of applicable law or College policy, such as under circumstances that might contribute to the creation of a hostile academic or work environment, is prohibited.”
Sandwiching “pornographic” between “harassing” and “threatening” is loaded. Bowdoin’s wording isn’t really clear here—maybe they just don’t want us watching porn on the first floor of H-L. Watching porn is legal. We’re all over 18. We should be able to watch it in the privacy of the Stacks (...or our homes). It’s valid to have complicated feeling about porn—we both have our qualms with it. But it’s not Bowdoin’s job to regulate those feelings under the guise of protecting against a “hostile academic or work environment” or network security. The ambiguity here leaves room for Bowdoin to take a moralized stance on our sexualities. Bowdoin is going to shape us no matter what. It’s a residential college: we spend four super-intense growing years of our lives here. We have a right to make Bowdoin the place we want it to be. We have an obligation to be critical of this place, and to speak our minds about what we want to see change. The All Sophomore Meeting and Bowdoin’s policy on porn are not necessarily representative of Bowdoin at large, but they highlight these moments when Bowdoin tiptoes into the territory of a helicopter parent. Bowdoin is not Big Brother, because we won’t allow it to be. Power runs in all directions.
-
Doublethink: Recognizing Bowdoin as part of "the real world"
After a break of globetrotting or deep existential musings or endless hours of catching up on “Scandal” with mom and the cat, we’re all back in the arctic tundra of a January Bowdoin. With a week under our belts, a soft 90 percent of all our conversations have included either inquiries about how our breaks were or lamentations on how annoying inquiries about our breaks are. We’re also finding ourselves describing our transitions from “The Real World” back to Bowdoin. And no, we’re not talking about the two-decade running cultural phenomenon that was MTV’s “Real World.”
The phrase “The Real World” gets tossed around a lot at Bowdoin. Recently, we’ve heard it used as an excuse for unsavory behavior on our campus and other college campuses. But more broadly at Bowdoin, the phrase is used to differentiate the place where we spend the majority of our time from reality. Anytime we leave Bowdoin, we enter this real world. Anytime we pause to consider the utility of which classes we take and which major we choose, we’re factoring in “The Real World.” Anytime we think about life after Bowdoin, we name it “The Real World.” We talk about our time here as if it’s a magical fairyland summer camp where time just doesn’t seem to hold the same weight as it does elsewhere.
Of course, life at Bowdoin feels different from life anywhere else. It’s highly concentrated. We’re enveloped by a frenzy of campus wides and heated discussions on the top floor of Adams and Moulton brunch playlists and lab reports and blizzards and sunrise smoothies and the most stimulating, thoughtful, fun people we’ve ever encountered. Each day feels like three days. What about this is not “real”?
Sure, we’re privileged here. We’re nurtured. Sheltered, even. But that doesn’t mean we should discount our time at Bowdoin as something separate from real life. When we split ourselves this way, we’re always internally at odds. Reconciling distance, and who we are in different places, is part of growing up. But calling anywhere besides here “The Real World” makes this task harder. Because how can we possibly become cohesive, functional people out of the disjointed sections of our lives while not giving Bowdoin the gravity of “The Real World?”“The Real World” has many iterations. The two of us link it with the stability and structure in our lives before Bowdoin. But it can also mean the “harsh reality” that lies outside the bubble. It can mean personal space. It can mean the world that expects us to work hard and make money and be “successful.” Even though we think of “The Real World” in different ways, it is always in opposition to Bowdoin.
In doing this, we’re framing Bowdoin and our daily lives here as unreal. It’s not a big jump to go from here to “what I’m learning won’t matter outside of this context,” “this time is just a placeholder” and “my feelings aren’t that important.” So we slump. As sophomores, slump is in the air. The more that’s put on our plates—major declaration, study abroad applications, housing choices, increasingly intricate social scenes—the harder we slump. It’s tempting to slip into some combination of dealing with these things and complaining about dealing with these things or just blowing it all off and hiding under the blankets. We are forced to grapple with decisions from “The Real World” while living in a space that we deem not real. So we lose motivation. We stop being present. We forget to relish this place.
Bowdoin is reality. It’s real because we experience it every day. That’s the point, in and of itself. By existing here, we make it “The Real World.” And that’s scary as shit, right? We’re staring big decisions in the face all the time, and we want to write our uncertainty off as unreal, as just passing through. But maybe we ought to sink into that instability. Being in-between is terrifying, but it’s exciting, and it is “The Real World.”