Thursday, August 18, 2005

That's hot (in a purely academic way)

The Sasquatch tells me that Newsweek has declared our alma mater, Macalester College, to be the hottest thang around in liberal arts colleges today. Wow. I had no idea we were so cool.

I hope Mr. Squatch blogs a bit about this phenomenon. His college recollections are more clear, more interesting, and more sunny than mine. (Of course, he never tried to fly down a flight of stairs or had to live with Worm Girl, the scary freshman roommate, but still...)

I actually considered transferring to another school during my sophomore year after I was declared by a whole classroom to be a "racist, sexist, bigot woman" after asking just what "womyn's music" really was. (The daily campus event sheet had noted a "womyn's music" gathering that night. Men were only allowed in if brought as a guest by womyn. I wanted to know if womyn's music used different notes or some other system to differentiate it from "regular music." My bad, apparently.)

In the end, I stayed, but I was out of the country, on off-campus programs, for the next year and a half. I came back and felt so out of the loop for my last semester, it was freaky. My friends were all hooked up in relationships and I had missed out on a whole lot of stuff, so I basically stayed at the Russian House most of the time, writing my honors thesis and keeping the resident house stoner from eating everyone's food and burning the place down.

Several years ago, I went on an AIDS Walk here in DC with a friend of the Sasquatch. I'd heard that Macalester alumni had a group going on the walk. When we found them, I discovered there were several people in the group who graduated the same time I did. None of them remembered me, but all of them were like, "Oh, you know the Sasquatch?!? Oh, what a great guy!"

These alums all knew each other and showed absolutely no interest in me joining their merry band. One of them said, "Oh, you're walking today? Well, have a good time!" Yikes. Suffice it to say, I did not walk with the warm 'n' fuzzy MacPeople.

I get flyers every couple of months for alumni events, but I never go. I feel that, even as an alumnae, I never quite fit in.

Then again, I was the same with the Girl Scouts. I ended up as a Lone Scout and got my badges on an "independent study" basis.

I'm a curmudgeon, I guess. Is that so bad?

Macalester did give me good overseas adventures and some really great friends, though. I met the Atomic Editor on my first day of classes. And next month marks 20 years since I met the Sasquatch on a trek across campus to see another friend (and I ended up meeting his very cool roommate, Gonzomantis, who is a very cool person still.)

So, I guess I have to keep everything in perspective, balancing good and bad. Macalester ain't everybody's cup of joe, but then again, I'm a pretty odd person. It's unlikely I was ever going to find a place that was perfect for someone like me. In fact, I'm still in those boots today. I really do think there isn't a place that's "just right" for me. These days, I'm not sure about anything being right for me.

2 comments:

Merujo said...

Or, in the words of Dr. Emilio Lizardo, "Home is-ah where you-ah wear your hat!"

:-)

Anonymous said...

We share such similar academic styles. Independent Studies for Girl Scouts - yeah, you are my kind of people.

SJL