The View from Here
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PrintHenry Adams didn’t think much of his Harvard education. In 1907, he penned The Education of Henry Adams, and, writing in third person, said, “The four years passed at college were, for his purposes wasted…He did not want to be one in a hundred – one per cent of an education. He regarded himself as the only person for whom his education had value, and he wanted the whole of it.”
As I reflected on my one year of a Bostonian education – at Boston College – I thought: If Henry thought Harvard was a waste, I can’t imagine what he would have said about college now.
A century after Adams wrote of his education, I commenced the most important stage of my education – at Harvard’s Jesuit afterthought. Boston College had been a top choice for this Choate graduate and, though I was eager for the next phase of parentless schooling, I disregarded universities like Columbia and NYU as being too urban, too alternative. I was looking for the real “college experience,” one that a campus school supposedly offered.
As I recall, late summer of 2007 was a time of great anticipation as I pictured what my next four years in Chestnut Hill would be like. (It should be noted that Boston College, contrary to its deceptive name, is not only outside the city of Boston but is also not even a college – it’s technically a university.)
By the end of my first month, I was completely disillusioned.
I knew things weren’t quite right as early as orientation when I discovered that my freshman adviser was, in fact, a nun. She didn’t wear a habit, but I thought it best to withhold the fact that I once dressed as a pregnant Mother Superior for Halloween. When I complained to my father that BC admissions had “tricked me” into thinking the school was not very religious, he told me that a little traditionalism might be good for me after four years at liberal New England prep school.
The real breaking point, however, occurred during the homecoming football game at BC’s Alumni Stadium or, as I half-jokingly call it, the ninth circle of hell. For over three hours, I stood in a sea of mustard yellow “Super Fan” tee shirts and watched BC beat Wake Forest in the most anticlimactic moment of my life. There, among the wasted students slurring the lyrics to “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” I feared that my college education would be wasted, too.
I went to one more game, just to prove that I wasn’t being a pretentious, pseudo intellectual New York snob. But I couldn’t take any more of it, and I sold my season tickets to a forty-something father of three who preferred standing in the student section (with the female students, I imagine).
And so every Saturday afternoon, when crowds of yellow clad, blacked-out students ritually headed to the circle, I relished in the silence of Claver dormitory and watched episodes of 30 Rock on my laptop. And I longed for New York.
To be fair, it wasn’t merely the football games or the subsequent freshman beer-fests (I can’t bring myself to refer to them as “parties”) that turned me off of Boston College. It wasn’t even Boston College itself. It was, rather, the obligation of having the normal “college experience” – the experience I thought I was supposed to want – that was the source of my discontent.
For the most part – and I preface all my conclusions about college with “for the most part” – students at schools like BC often strive to be a part of the Super Fan cult. And to be Super Fan, you go to class, you possibly join an organization, and you certainly attend the football or basketball games and the subsequent dormitory gatherings – and you enjoy it all, or pretend to at least.
here’s nothing wrong with being a Super Fan. I have friends at Duke and Michigan and Boston College (at least I did before this essay) who enjoy the routine of campus life and wouldn’t want to experience college any other way. But, I was never a Super Fan and, for me, being one meant sacrificing individuality – being one in a hundred.
So when I ran out of 30 Rock episodes on those Saturday afternoons in Chestnut Hill, I began working on my transfer applications to the schools I had formerly disregarded. I wanted nothing to do with the “college experience.” I wanted out of the cult. And I saw New York – particularly, Barnard College – as being the vehicle through which I could escape, and eventually discover what being an individual even means.
And being a Barnard student, affiliated with Columbia University, in the city of New York, has largely allowed me to do just that. There are few, if any, Super Fans here. There are many flavors of Kool Aid to try. There is no one “college experience.” Sure, this realization is not news to anyone in the Columbia universe. But, it is something I have come to appreciate even more during this season of March Madness, when I turn on the television and see crowds of Super Fans participating in their rituals. At this point, I’ll usually watch an episode of 30 Rock.
26 March 2009
vol. 6, issue 7
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