What it means to go to a women's college

I didn’t want to go to a women’s college.  As I applied for schools and received my acceptance letters I was stuck deciding between two equally great schools, neither of which appealed to me. In my mind I was screwed and convinced myself to choose one and transfer after a year or a semester.  I chose Bryn Mawr College because of the two final options it was closer and freaked me out slightly less than the other option. I spent part of my summer anxiously waiting what I had determined would be an okay experience and I didn’t have high expectations of the experience of college much less that of a women’s college. 

It happened sometime in February my first year at Bryn Mawr. When I fell in love. I fell in love with the people.  I fell in love with the traditions.  And most importantly I fell in love with a community that I fit into and became a part of wholeheartedly.  While I have never considered myself a person of faith or destiny, I am beginning to believe that everything happens for a reason, and that Bryn Mawr ‘happened’ for me. 

Going to a women’s college means different things for everyone. For some it means posting on the women’s college problems tumblr.  For others it means experimenting with sexuality, breaking the bonds of our world that is undeniably heteronormative.  It means repeatedly saying, “it’s not a girl’s school, it’s a women’s college” to your friends back home.  For me, it has meant those things to a certain extent, but more importantly it has transformed me into a different person.  I have spent three years at the institution and I have become a more thoughtful, more articulate, more confident, and more confused individual than I have ever been before and it has been a wonderful experience.  I would never trade my hours at Bryn Mawr for any hour at a coed institution.  While I love Bryn Mawr for all the glories that I enjoy I don’t consider myself a typical Bryn Mawr student, passionate about all the traditions, eagerly chasing the norms down so that I can break them, and attempting to be as out of the box as possible.  Frankly I spend the majority of my time either at the library, at the gym or talking with my friends.  All perfectly acceptable things to do, but then, you might ask why do I love Bryn Mawr so much?  Why do I, the girl from rural Vermont, raised by two very progressive intellectuals, then feel such a strong love and admiration for the Mawr?    

I love Bryn Mawr because of all the women.  I love the environment both academically and socially that not only supports us and pushes us to be the best we can be, but also encourages us to be and to find who we are meant to be.  Isn’t that what college (any college) is about?  Finding yourself and finding who you are “supposed to be” is supposed to happen in your twenties I guess. I thought it happened when I was sixteen.  That would have been early bloomer to the extreme.  And I’m glad that I’m not the person I was when I was sixteen.  Bryn Mawr has made me a woman with self-respect for my person and the work that I do.  I have become a more considerate person and I really good listener.  I have also become a better talker, but that will hopefully continue to improve with time.  I have learned to understand the importance of community.  The Bryn Mawr community is one of the most invaluable characteristics of my experience.  It isn’t just about my friends that I’ve made here, but the understanding that everyone who walks the hallways of Thomas Great Hall or the cherry blossomed path has been through similar experiences that I have and understands parts of me because we share something that has become a part of us. 

Anybody thinking of WWOOFing?

As for WWOOFing. I had a mixed experience. I'll give you some quick information now and if you'd like to know about the specific problems I had I am more than happy to tell you.
First off I think WWOOFing is a great opportunity and really does encourage immersion that is unique and challenging in ways that going to school is not. For this reason, among others I think it was the most informative experience I did while abroad. I also did it alone which forced me to become more independent and focused on what I was doing and where I was going than I'd ever had to before, mainly because I plopped myself in the middle of nowhere Normandy and trusted in myself and in the people I was with that everything would be okay.

I think it is better to do it alone, mainly because you are likely to meet other WWOOFers either on the farms or nearby. Since it is a growth experience, growing alone allows for more opportunities to put all your faith in yourself.

The main issue about WWOOFing which I would really say isn't a problem but just a quality of WWOOFing based on the nature of the program is that many of the farms are poor or have people incapable doing as much work as they would like. One of the farms I was at, the woman owed the bank 600,000 euros and could barely provide food for us much less the animals. The second farm, the woman had a medical problem that prevented her from doing manual labor (I'm still not sure if this was entirely true) and so basically hired WWOOFers to do her chores (her farm was also not very extensive and didn't produce anything or have any visitors). Both of these farms are designated "pédagogique" which meant that they were for educational purposes and therefore partially subsidized by the state. These two farms were the most difficult for me for these reasons among others. I actually ended up leaving the second farm more than two weeks early because of the bad relationship I had with the woman.

The last farm I was at was wonderful and I think that it is really luck as to where you land without any background information. This farm was operated by two different couples who shared the land and lived communally. There were other people living on the farm as well and the community was young, fun, exciting, and very willing to share the experience with me. These people were great and I still keep in touch.

The only other WWOOF experience I know about that is different was that of a friend of mine who WWOOFed in the south of France at a very primitive farm in which she slept outside on a hill with some goats and had buckets for bathrooms...

Retrospectively it would have been nice to have read reviews of the farms that I was thinking about before I inquired so that I could read about other WWOOFers experiences. Some countries do have this...France does not. While this may have been helpful, there could have easily been people that enjoyed the farms where I had difficulties. I think a lot of it depends on the personalities of the WWOOFer and the farmer.

n.b. A friend of mine asked me about WWOOFing and as I was writing to her I thought I'd share my experiences with you.  It has almost been a year since I started WWOOFing in Normandy last summer so I think of these as words of attempted wisdom. If you'd like to know more, please let me know.

Crawfish, Bayou, Levees

The Carter Center, Summer 2013

As many of you know this summer I will be spending ten weeks in Atlanta, Georgia as an intern for The Carter Center.  I am thrilled at this opportunity and I couldn't be more excited to start my first day of orientation in one hour.  I have dreamed about an opportunity like this since I was sixteen.  It was then that I realized my passion for human rights and sub-Saharan Africa.  At The Carter Center (TCC) I will be able to combine these two passions as I work on the Human Rights Program focused on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  As I know more about what I will be doing I will post so that you, as my readers, can know what we will be doing at TCC.

What I can tell you so far is that we are working on country-based programming in the DRC centered on villages affected by mining in the Southeast of the DRC.  For those of you that are French speakers the research that is complied by grassroots, local, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground is found on the Congo Mines website, affiliated with TCC.

The only other interesting information I can tell you thus far is that I will be visiting Plains, Georgia sometime in June to see Jimmy Carter's peanut farm.  And while I will be missing the annual peanut farm, I am looking forward to see President Carter in his "natural habitat."

I need a love to keep me happy

So I have been back for just over three months. Back to my life.  It is an odd phrase given that my life follows me around wherever I go.  For some reason some parts of life are supposed to be more your life than others?  Back at school I am getting back into the swing of things, more or less.  I definitely feel like a different person and not just as a result of being abroad.  Just as I was leaving Europe (I was last in Prague, Vienna, and the Swiss Alps) I had an identity crisis.  A pretty big one, given the scheme of my fairly stable life.  I worried that what I was doing wouldn't make me happy.  I worried that my interest in international human rights and advocating for certain forms of transitional justice wasn't as pure or good as I wanted it to be.  I had this idealized notion that my life's work and my career would involve doing good.  That doesn't seem too hard for anyone to accomplish but I began to think of the limitations of certain work, especially that in the international sphere.  I began to realize that any job I had working as a pro-bono international human rights lawyer for African victims wouldn't be completely free of Western biases or neo-colonialism.  I don't want to perpetuate "White Guilt", nor do I want to continue a regime of thinking that it is the West's responsibility to help Africans out of their "misery".  I want to help, be as active and responsible as I can without damaging the lives of people. As I was walking the streets of Zurich with my dad one night I brought up this issue.  I asked him, is it possible to have the perfect job?  The job where you are happy, successful, and doing important work while at the same time not compromising others, using others for your own benefit, or hurting or overreaching in responsibility?  His response  "no job is perfect."  I realized after walking around for an hour under the lights of Zurich on December 26th that I can't ask for all of this from a job, a career, or life in general.  I have to accept whatever opportunities I choose and understand that certain accommodations have to be made and not all issues can be resolved.  I realized though that the most important thing in my life that I can ask for and that I can ensure is being happy. I want to be happy.  I don't need to be ecstatic everyday. I don't need to smile from ear to ear every moment. But I want to be happy with the life I lead.  My crisis came at wondering whether my dreams and aspirations I've had since I was in high school, of working with international human rights, would make me happy.  Absolutely happy.  Could something else make me happier?  Was I settling for my idealized notion of what I expected myself to be?  Could there be something out there that I was more suited for in this life?

Coming back to the United States and coming back "home" I was forced to face reality. Academia in particular struck me pretty hard.  It felt like whiplash as I was home in Vermont for six days before I rushed to Philadelphia to take up my two classes at the University of Pennsylvania   Immediately I had placed myself in two courses on Africa.  One a graduate class on African Political Economy.  But was this where I was supposed to be?  How was I supposed to know? And how was I supposed to figure it out?  I had no idea.  It was the worst feeling.  I'm one of those people that likes to know what's ahead.  I like to have a mental map in my head of everything in the future. Thinking that I wanted to be x or z I knew the steps I would take to achieve x and z.  But the limbo of not knowing what my life might look like after Bryn Mawr was scary.  It wasn't comfortable but I wasn't about to change my major and spend another year at school fulfilling requirements.  I knew I'd figure it out and meanwhile I'd graduate with a B.A in Political Science and French.  But I still kept asking myself, what if this isn't what I want?  What if this doesn't make me happy?  What do I do now?  And will I know if I'm ever completely happy?

After many moments in my own head over analyzing my thoughts and talking with family and friends I realized that it didn't matter if I was doing what it is I wanted to do.  That unknown would figure itself out eventually.  When I was in France for seven months I learned a lot about patience and the ways to deal with the unknowns, especially when they might be thousands of miles across the globe.  There were only certain things I could do to understand those uncertainties.  I decided that this knowledge could easily be applied to my life back in the United States.  It could also be potentially beneficial given my current situation. I could graduate with this degree and then what?  Who knows?  I have at least a year to figure out and the only one pressuring me to decide (besides societal norms) was me.  I began to realize that this anxiety and unknown factor in my life was actually really good for me. I had been so headstrong and determined to do x, y, or z that I had missed out on other parts of my life.  There were the things that I now realized I enjoyed in France. I loved farming in Normandy even though I wasn't studying and focusing directly on issues of international human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Instead I was weeding and cultivating the leeks so that by the fall and winter there would be enough food for the pigs.  And when I was living in Paris I had the opportunity to speak French to strangers, run to the Eiffel Tower in the mornings and bask in the complete frenchness of Paris.  These were things that while I was in France didn't always please me.  But I realize that while I may have been lonely for certain things from the United States while I was abroad, I now yearn for parts of my life in France.  My life wasn't any easier, and in many ways it was made more difficult by the obstacles I had to face on different levels, but it was different, exciting, and completely enthralling.

After my slight identity crisis (that's how I categorize it now) I realize that I am in many ways the same person I was before I left for France.  I still loving the Rolling Stones, funky jazz music, really good lettuce, and studying about African Politics.  But I also know now that I love being independent.  I love learning new things and meeting new people. I like the uncertainty.  It may drive me crazy at times but it has made me a stronger, wiser, and a more attuned person.  The uncertainties in my life may be unclear and anxiety provoking, but now they make me happy.  The opportunities are limitless and I'm keeping an open mind.