This place is a bubble. Of course it is. Every fall, two-thousand students leave their homes—many in affluent suburban neighborhoods outside of major cities—to head to a small town on the coast of Maine. As you cross the state border from New Hampshire to Maine, the “Welcome to Vacationland” sign greets you, and if you flew into Portland, you can find the phrase “Vacationland” stamped on the license plate of almost every car you pass on the ride from the airport to campus.
There’s nothing like walking home from a long day of classes and extracurriculars to find a dozen people crowding the thin halls of Coleman, munching on Hannaford brand potato chips and waiting for their love lives to be predicted from a random spread of tarot cards on the carpeted floors.
One fateful day, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead!” And on an even more fateful day, Chayma Charifi wrote, “God is dead.… but Cupid isn’t!” According to Nietzsche, God’s death means that humans are now free to create their own values and meanings.
What started as an innocent, nerdy obsession turned into a long-running bit and has now become an emotional touchstone of a failing system. I am, of course, talking about my love for former President Jimmy Carter.
It’s become the universalized symbol of winter: the first snow, where you run out in the now cold air. A light dusting covers the ground and you try to catch a snowflake on your tongue. I always look forward to that first snow of the year, because it marks the changing of the seasons and the beginning of a beautiful winter.
It was summer in New York City, and the heat was unwavering and oppressive. I stood in front of a mirror, my brow furrowed as I scrutinized my reflection. My feet touched, and I stood erect.
“Drew is my home name and Andrew is my school name.” – Me, circa 2007, before going off to kindergarten.
For my entire life, my family has called me “Drew” and just about everyone else has called me “Andrew.” When I tell people that I go by Drew at home, they usually react with a mix of shock and confusion, which I always find surprising.
I’ve struggled with my mental health all my life, and what conditions I may have burrowing inside my head have been a mystery to me up until this past year. Even though I have dealt with nearly debilitating anxiety and depression since elementary school, I didn’t get properly diagnosed until spring of last year (happy one year diagnosis-versary to me!) thanks to Bowdoin Counseling and Wellness Services.
As I muster a deep breath in, sniffles ensue. I look around, thinking insistently about zipping up my coat and trudging back to Coles Tower. But instead of making the first motion towards my tan puffer, I stop myself.
As warm aromas of Thanksgiving cooking rose from the kitchen into my bedroom, I woke up with a feeling of excitement that my family and I were finally having a real, home-cooked Thanksgiving meal. As I ran down the stairs, I looked forward to saying goodbye to our annual, premade Costco Thanksgiving dinners and hello to homemade turkey and mashed potatoes.
One Sunday morning, you wake up, check your phone and gawk at the early hour—who would have thought that you would be up naturally at 8 a.m. on Sunday? The world is your metaphorical oyster, and a quick peek behind the blinds confirms the weather is beautiful.
I grew up in a working-class neighborhood a few minutes away from the Newark Airport. My father, a limousine driver, purchased the house right before the 2008 recession. As the mortgage payments rose and the foreclosure letters hit the mail, my father worked longer hours behind the wheel.
Many traditions have come and gone at the College. From Ivies and Supers to pub trivia and Dinner with Six Strangers, the common thread is clear: an emphasis on social connection.
Many students apply to Bowdoin with hopes of belonging in a small, tight-knit community.
I never realized how comfortable I had become in the “Bowdoin bubble” until I ventured outside of it for the first time since coming to campus. Stepping off the train at Boston’s North Station during Fall Break felt like a jolt to my system in a way that I had never experienced before.
I didn’t start talking until I was three years old.
One of my first conversations was with four walls in my grandmother’s home in Morocco. My mom tells me that I would “faire la bise’’ each wall, enthusiastically (and in Moroccan fashion) talking a mile a minute: “How are you!” “Oh, it’s so great to see you.” “How are the kids?” I nodded along to imaginary responses, carving out equal pockets of ‘eye contact’ to ensure each wall got its share of my attention.
Looking out my bedroom window, I see a bright light blinking across the dark sky. The sound of an engine rumbles low in the distance.
“Starlight, star bright,” I whisper to myself.
Growing up next to Boston Logan International Airport, there was too much light pollution to see more than the moon and clouds in the night sky.
The other day, I was in Thorne, and I saw two of my friends talking. One of them said something, and the other laughed. My immediate reaction was that they were obviously making fun of me, even though I sat three tables away, and they had just arrived.
“F1 visum, I-20 formulier, paspoort, twee grote tassen en mezelf” is what I thought when I stepped onto the plane in Brussels.
Why did I leave? That’s a question I ask myself quite often. I know other people have less of a choice than I do.
As Allie Ostrander says in her 2021 YouTube video “ugh,” being a runner and losing running to an injury or other health issue is a loss that requires grieving. She dramatically (and hilariously) acts out the five stages of grief and explains that it’s possible to experience multiple stages simultaneously or many times.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes that here at Bowdoin, “the sea so near [is] yet unseen.” This line is from a poem Longfellow wrote for his 50th class reunion in 1875. 147 years later, his words still hold water and a little bit of wisdom.
The College Houses were what drew me to Bowdoin. Growing up in Brunswick—and later supported by a tour I took—the College Houses were, in my eyes, Bowdoin’s social life. As a first-year, I have experienced nightlife, a cappella, jazz, capture-the-flag and poetry through the College Houses, all of which have lived up to my expectations of what these houses provide.
The night before my economics midterm, I was dumped inside the Smith Union gender-neutral bathroom on the right, sobbing in the last stall. My hands were trembling as I typed out “Is it really over?” I couldn’t really believe it.
In 2004, Yankees player Derek Jeter was in a historic slump. What 2004 was to Derek Jeter, March of 2022 was to us. We were in a tea slump—bored of our usual teas, unwilling to branch out, we were uninspired.
We are the children of loving, emotionally abusive parents who could not break the cycle of abuse. We are the children of immigrant families who constantly question the meaning of love and what the dictionary definition of emotional abuse is.
When I tell people at Bowdoin that I’m from Tampa, Fla., the three most common responses are: “Do you like football?” “My grandparents live in Sarasota” and “Oh wow … how do you like that?”
The first always has something to do with Tom Brady, the second with Florida’s large population of the elderly (even though Sarasota is very cool), but the third could go many ways.
Today I wrote an entire page of notes with the date “February 9, 2020” at the top of my notebook. With 20-or-so minutes left in my class, I realized that it was, in fact, the year 2022 and not 2020.
I don’t know who needs to hear this. Maybe just myself. So to whomever I’m writing for, I hope this finds you well. I hope what I say brings you comfort or insight. At the very least, I hope you know you are not alone.
“We all hate home,” declared Phlip Larkin in his poem “Poetry of Departures.” Written in his inimitable and characteristically lugubrious style, it was this idea that rang in my mind as I spent some weeks over winter break pondering what home is and how cruel, challenging, but ultimately vindicating it can prove to be.
“What are y’all sorry about?”
Following my first semester as a Polar Bear, I nearly bawled after seeing a cowboy hat at the Memphis International Airport. That flamboyant hat, paired with muddy cowboy boots and a raspy Southern drawl was enough to make me break out into song.
One day this past spring, I decided to dust off my old Nintendo DS and pop in “Professor Layton and the Curious Village,” the first installment in a six-game series about Hershel Layton, a gentlemanly archaeology professor in London, and his young apprentice, Luke, who solve puzzles and mysteries together.
Being offered the “aux” is one of those unnecessarily frightening experiences. Sure, it’s an opportunity to share your personal music taste with the world—but that’s not always a boon. You might simultaneously agree with the notions that music being “good” or “bad” is purely subjective, but also that our music taste is a display of identity—so why is one’s personal music taste vulnerable to criticism?
First and foremost, allow me to preface this article with a word of caution: this is a personal dialogue. In the process of writing, I concluded that this submission was going to be nothing more than a way for me to organize my thoughts—a process for me to take what was crammed into my mind and place it onto paper.
Every year, my Halloween costume has something to do with my hair. I’ve kept my super-curly hair cut just above my shoulders since middle school, which is the prime length for costumes such as a mad scientist, a lion or a bush.
There I found myself, in an unfamiliar land, surrounded by familiar faces. After an eventful day of getting lost on the subway, missing breakfast and facing near (phone battery) death, it’s easy to see why I found a certain respite in fresh New York City bagels and conversation with high school friends.
I grew up in Orono, Maine. To anybody who’s actually from Maine and has knowledge of the local geography, Orono is in central Maine. That’s the truth. However, I still tell fellow Bowdoin students that I’m from “northern Maine” because people from the West Coast typically think that anywhere north of Augusta is just an outcropping of moose and deer-filled wilderness.
I’ve never been good with apologies. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I used to view apologies as the very end of the long journey that is personal growth. In my mind, becoming a better person would always play out just like in the movies—a sappy apology and a sweet conclusion as the credits roll.
To me, the hardest part about dancing has been trying to find my purpose, my why: figuring out how to find meaning in my movements beyond how they feel on my muscles or how they look in the mirror.
Content warning: This article contains descriptions of child sexual abuse
One day, my sister and I were playing in the woods. I followed after her every step of the way. I was looking for fairies, she was hunting for bugs.
Despite living in Chamberlain Hall for three months last fall, I had never been on campus before this year. Sure, the caricature of the person that I desperately tried to be was there, flat-ironing her poor hair to death.
While I was studying back home in Thailand, my morning routine was taking a driving lesson taught by my grandpa. I would drive through the streets of suburban Bangkok, surrounded by electrical poles holding up black cables that tangle more viciously than your previous romantic situation.
I have a good friend who’s no longer a good friend. We’re no longer on speaking terms, and I don’t know how much longer this will be the case. Even though we only met last September, they became one of my closest friends, and I became one of theirs.
During my first year on Bowdoin’s campus, thousands of questions would swim through my head on any given day. Some of them would be necessary (Thorne or Moulton today?), others slightly less so (What would my psychology professor look like without his famed beard?).
I still remember the call the day after I received the acceptance letter from Bowdoin. It was from my best friend. Well, “best friend” before she simply disappeared during our junior year of high school and nobody knew where she went.
I was taught to appreciate distance on a small playground during a rainy day. Having attended a boarding school in suburban China since I was 12, I remember the compulsory military training that first confounded my idea of an inseparable family life, forever based in unconditional love, connectedness and rationality.
It’s a Sunday afternoon in October. I’m sitting on my couch underneath my new plush blanket covered in cartoons of ghosts and of the word “boo.” There’s a candle burning on my desk. Outside, the leaves are swirling down from the trees, like a typical Maine autumn day.
Today, I’m writing with a cup of jasmine tea by my side. I just finished preparing a marinade for the lamb steaks I will cook for my roommates later, and I finally started the first chapter of “Normal People” at the recommendation of too many friends.
Immunocompromised is a word that has been tossed around quite often this year. In the terms of the pandemic, it is labeled as a pre-existing medical condition describing these mythical people who somehow can’t handle the coronavirus like the rest of the American population would.
During the first month at Bowdoin, the most common question everybody asked me was “Where are you from?” I think I just gave up at a certain point (maybe starting this semester) and gave them what they wanted to hear—“I’m Chinese American.” To be honest, I don’t even think I answered their question, but it was enough.
Face masks were mostly associated with East and Southeast Asia during the pre-COVID-19 era (which I now dub PCE). They helped filter out air pollution or, for motorcycle riders, vehicular exhaust. Cloth masks kept faces warm in the winter.
From early January to mid-March of this year, I spent much of my free time swimming, surfing, sunbathing and hiking around the beautiful island of Oahu. Studying at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, I spent most of my time in the classroom learning about Hawaiian history and culture, the U.S.-militarized Pacific and American imperialism.
When I look back at my time at Bowdoin, I feel a mix of emotions. A nostalgic sadness is deepened every time that I think about all the missed fun with friends in the closing weeks of the semester.
I sing and play my music loudly to mask the ominous rattling coming from the engine of my 2003 Jeep Liberty. On my drive, I pass all of the major landmarks of my hometown. The pizza shop I used to work at, the only grocery store in town, the donut shop, the ice cream place, my high school, the bank, the car repair place and the tobacco fields.
It’s mid-afternoon on a Monday, and my ability to focus is at an all-time low. I’m in my bedroom at home, sitting at my desk. On my laptop screen, an instructor from my abroad program is starting a remote class session from her home in southwest England.
Among the many life-altering disruptions caused by COVID-19 was the cancelation of spring semester sports. As someone who bawled his eyes out onto the shoulders of 30 scantily-clad men at the end of my final Bowdoin hockey season—an end that I was completely prepared for—I cannot imagine how difficult it has been for spring athletes who have had their opportunity to write their final sports chapter unexpectedly and abruptly taken from them.
We’ll admit, it’s a bit of a strange moment to memorialize. Our Zipcar, a black Subaru Crosstrek, is parked at the Potash Boat Launch on the Colorado River, a gear explosion surrounding the vehicle and PC, Ellie and Chelsea digging through bags, boats and splash jackets.
I can’t look at the pictures yet. I know exactly which ones I love most: PC and Ellie resting on the grass on our first day home, a blurry Andrew pointing at the camera on his birthday, Allyson grinning widely with orange-painted cheeks at House Olympics.
I had such great plans. I was going to serve my country and do something good in the world. I was going to adventure around obscure corners of the globe. I was going to defer the enormous student loans waiting for me after graduation.
About a month ago, I swam in my last race ever: the 200 butterfly at the NESCAC Championships. My coaches told me my fly had been looking good. My teammates were cheering me on behind the blocks.
It’s easy for me to remember the last time I felt this hopeless and distraught. It was in the fall of my freshman year, after the 2016 general election. Before election night, I was really excited.
I miss my dog. A lot. I miss him so much that I have taped not one but two photos of him to my carrel in the library, and sometimes I talk to them when no one is around.
My heart flutters when the door creaks open—the stage is dimly lit, empty. I grip my crinkled note card too hard, and my palms smudge the ink. I step out onto the stage. The clapping slows, my feet wander ahead despite hesitation.
Have you ever experienced a really, really bad jet lag?
Not the type where you crave dinner at 4 p.m. or feel the need to pop a melatonin before bed. This is something much more daunting and debilitating, an out-of-body experience where all is at once foreign yet familiar.
My family moved to Maine the summer before I started high school. I had spent most of life among the skyscrapers of Chicago, where anonymity was expected in the bustle of city crowds. Yet I felt very connected to my city.
When I see the word “mental illness,” my mind goes straight to the word “illness.” Then a host of other words start to flow through my mind: disease, disability, impaired, bad, inferior, unworthy. The list continues, but the negative connotation of the words remain the same.
I recall my Bowdoin experience through excessive cultural consumption. It sounds like Nick Hornby “High Fidelity”—like mumbo jumbo, but it’s a great cataloging method.
Fall 2016: I over-played Frank Ocean’s “Blonde.” Fall 2017: I discovered Pavement, and logically started to think I grew up in the 90s.
Once daily, I swallow a tiny pill that contains 100 mg of the drug Sertraline, more commonly known by its brand name, Zoloft. Sertraline has many side effects, including, but not limited to, worsening depression, dizziness, drowsiness, vomiting, diarrhea, decreased sex drive, impotence or difficulty having an orgasm.
Fashion is an essential part of my identity; it’s partly rooted in my personality, but it truly stems from a cultural expectation of dress I learned while growing up in an African family living in Boston.
These self-portraits were made by William Utermohlen, a 20th century contemporary artist. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1995. At the onset of his Alzheimer’s, he decided to sketch a portrait of himself once a year until 2000—he died in 2007.
When I was 16, I started starving myself. Troubled with weight issues—real and imagined—my whole life, I took advantage of a stomach bug I caught while traveling. I began a trend of underfeeding myself, going hungry for hours every day, then working out for upwards of 60 minutes, six to seven days a week.
Growing up, the High Holidays were the only time my whole family would go to synagogue. “High Holidays” is the collective name for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
My freshman fall, I was still reeling from two breakups I’d gone through my last year of high school. One was with a friend, and one was with a boyfriend. At 17 years old, the loss of those relationships wreaked total havoc on my sense of self.
I am a profoundly uncomfortable person. I don’t make people feel uncomfortable, and I often feel emotionally comfortable, but I struggle to be physically comfortable—especially when seated. I squirm, tap my foot, adjust and re-adjust my seat.
On March 28, 2019 there was a significant passing in my world. The series “Broad City” aired its final episode after a wildly successful five season run. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Broad City is a raunchy buddy comedy starring two millennial women living and working in New York City.
There should be a Schoolhouse Rock episode about how the Orient’s production night works. Without the help of a nifty jingle, I will not attempt to describe the full process, but rather set down here that it involves six rounds of edits, various photo and design checks and a weekly $50 snack budget.
“Game of Thrones” (GoT) is back, baby! Thank the Old Gods and the New. Heck, I’ll even thank R’hllor (sorry Shireen). There is a hole in my heart that can only be filled by the NFL or by dragons, and for now that hole is filled.
My friend Nathan and I knew we wanted to live in Reed House early in our first year. We loved the romance of the fire escapes, the neighborhood feeling and all our friends who lived there or who had lived there.
During my first mammogram, I put my shoes in a locker before entering an inner waiting room. After I passed the front desk and made my way down a hallway, I was handed a robe the color of chewed bubblegum.
It’s 8:34 a.m. and I awaken to the pitter patter of rain on my window. “Guess it’s time to put those rain pants to good use,” I think. They’re nothing special—just a kid’s large from Amazon that provide the same fit and utility I’d get from an adult small, but for $10 less.
“Y el muro … ¿funcionará?” “And the wall… will it work?” asks an older man, who is kind and usually smiling but now looks concerned. He has dark skin, wrinkles around his eyes and a t-shirt torn at the sleeves.
When women were first admitted to the College in 1971, they enthusiastically pushed their way into all aspects of campus life, especially the athletic arena.
As former Athletic Director Ed Coombs said in an Orient article from 1979, “I don’t think we or any of these schools [that went co-ed] anticipated the type of sports these women would want to play.
“Yes, I was there for the earthquake … Yes, I felt it … crazy, humbling.” These words always seem to shake my listeners more than the earthquake shook me. Words have that effect.
I was in the mountains of Mardi Himal on April 25, 2015 when a 7.8-magniude earthquake shook Nepal.
Recently, I’ve spent a lot of my free time knitting and thinking about making. I grew up with crafting, making creative objects as a part of my daily life. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have my own fabric basket, craft box and knitting needles.
“I want to briefly share a few thoughts on my mind lately. Though I’m far from religious, I have an indelible tie to my Jewish heritage. My grandfather, Michael Schafir, was a Holocaust survivor. He spent five and half years in various forced labor and concentration camps throughout Poland and Germany.
I am not a generally happy person. This is not a new revelation (nor is it news, I’m sure, to any of my friends), but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. I like to say that my “resting emotion” is anger.
Oftentimes, I forget things. I forget my OneCard, my lab notebook or I forget about the banana that I put in my backpack a week ago. But I never forget to put on my raincoat on Tuesdays.
I’ve always been a homebody. I grew up in Falmouth, Maine and coincidentally decided to go to school just thirty minutes up the road in Brunswick. To some folks, my college decision seemed crazy. Why go to school so close?
Would you choose to be immortal?
I think it’s fair to generalize that everyone has pondered immortality at some point in their lives. Maybe you watched “Twilight” for the first time and wondered what it would be like to stay a teenager forever.
I thought that I wouldn’t think about suicide anymore if I got into Bowdoin. All this high school stuff was to be left in the past, and I would be a better, less jaded, more upbeat person.
Enduring the contempt of strangers can be emotionally draining. And contempt is, unsurprisingly, the primary impulse of those whose doors are knocked on when they’re eating dinner with their family, or when their newborn child has just fallen asleep, or they’re just about to dash off to the airport to catch a plane or when they’re already running late and a bright-faced, sweaty, idealistic kid shows up at their door telling them about the plight of sea turtles or the midterm elections.
Flashing lights, flocks of ill-tempered travelers, the symphony of yelling intermixed with cars honking—I was instantly shrouded in the familiar temperament of the city as I stepped outside the arrival hall. Within a matter of minutes, thanks to being a seasoned veteran of John.
Wish yourself into the eye of a hurricane. Search for your home in the sea of red pixels at the center of the storm. See the national news anchor stand where you and your friends took prom pictures; hear him say the coming night will smash it to pieces.
Between Sills and Searles, there exists an exceedingly large population of squirrels. They hang on tree branches and scurry in bushes, but largely, they romp around freely in the open grass. While the squirrels most frequently travel alone, they occasionally appear en masse and sometimes are seen in hot pursuit of other fellow squirrels.
This place holds secrets. I remember going outside in the early morning fog to be greeted with deafening silence from the cicadas who had stayed up all night buzzing. I remember staring out the car window for hours at sizzling gravel roads, wondering what horrors the rocks had seen.
“You aren’t immortal. Your time is limited and precious,” my mom constantly tells me.
It’s not as if she gives this advice to deter me from doing the things I love—or even from pursuing life-threatening endeavors.
My toes balance on the slotted, concrete boat launch, and the water around my ankles is cold. I walk forward, and the water makes itself known higher and higher on my body. Goosebumps coat my skin: I know I must dive in and that it will be warmer once I’m submerged.
Growing up, my anxiety was like a cloud. Always there, mostly invisible to others, making everything a little bit more grey. For many years, I thought that everyone had one. I had always been taught that my brain was my most valuable possession.
We are basically in a relationship. It’s been eight years. We’ve lived together for two and a half, traveled around the world, hung out with each other’s families and are currently listed as each other’s “emergency contact.” You can find us eating most meals together in Thorne, popping up most often in each other’s tagged photos and wearing full-set matching pajamas when we go to bed together each night.
The summer before to my freshman year, a burglar ransacked my house while I was home alone. It was a lazy morning. I was reading in bed when I heard the first knock. I continued reading without pause, noting that my mother—the only other resident of our home—was not due home until lunchtime.
Two years ago during my sophomore fall, I stumbled across an opinion article by Professor of Philosophy Sarah Conly in the Boston Globe. Professor Conly was writing on the heels of China’s decision to end its decades-old one-child policy and allow two children per family.
“Perché gli americani vogliono imparare l’italiano?” (“Why do Americans want to learn Italian?”) This was the question my friends asked when I told them that I was going to go from working on my Master’s in Italy to teaching Italian conversation at Bowdoin.
