When I was a senior in high school, I had the pleasure of visiting the beautiful campus of Washington College to see author Tim O’Brien speak as part of something called Sophie Kerr Weekend. The weekend included the lecture, dinner with Mr. O’Brien, an overnight stay in a real dorm room and a Saturday morning writing workshop with other prospective students. This weekend trip is what convinced me to go to Washington College; in fact, after I spent the weekend there, it was the only college to which I applied. Seven years after that initial visit, I returned as an alumna for Sophie Kerr Weekend 2010 to see Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, address the prospective class of 2014.
So much has changed about the liberal arts college where I spent some of the best times of my life. Massive construction projects that were just beginning as I graduated are now complete. There’s a new theatre (where the lecture took place, actually), new dorms that look like luxury hotels on the inside, and a new dining hall that reminded my friend Sara of an Atlantic City buffet. Oh, and Kent Circle, with its 7 or 8 coveted parking spaces, exists no more (this will only matter to readers who lived in the Hill dorms, the Cullen dorms or Kent). While I’m somewhat jealous of the students who get to have a much more comfortable campus experience, I’m also glad that I got to live in a converted office building (Gibson), an ancient building filled with creative arts majors (Middle—a dorm they will never get rid of because of its historical significance, but will never be the same as it was in 2004 when the best people ever lived there), and a slightly dumpy dorm with centipede issues improved only by the showerheads my best friend’s father donated (Worcester). The students who reside in Sassafras may never know what it’s like to sleep in several layers of clothing because northwest winds defeat the purpose of walls when radiators break (Worcester), but they also won’t have a gritty college experience to create anecdotes for nostalgic diatribes in blog entries. Yes, being back on campus at this point in my life has caused me to wax poetic about my time there, but I will try to pull myself back on track.
This was my first visit back to campus since starting graduate school (aka deciding to make something of myself), so perhaps the reason I enjoyed it so much is that I no longer feel like my degree is a complete waste. The company didn’t hurt, either. My darling friend Alisha (the one with the Dad who gave us water pressure in Worcester) is in her final semester, and she played hostess to Dan, me and several others. Sara, the founder of The Medium lit mag and someone I’ve worked with on multiple projects, came down with Rielly who I remember being involved with pubs too even though we didn’t hang out. Alisha’s good friend and fellow senior Maureen was present, and her brother Rob who worked with me on a group project in advertising and went to high school with Dan, showed up part way through the reading. Could you keep track of all that? Everyone shared more ties than those, as WAC is a tangled web, but those are the ties to me, the antisocial babbler. Standing in Alisha’s kitchen was probably the most social I’ve been in months, and I guess the difference for me is that on campus, even the most random social situations (usually) aren’t awkward. It was nice to swap stories and anecdotes, and it was good to show Dan more of what made me me.
We witnessed the lecture itself from the balcony of the new theatre. Rather than dealing with the crowds, we chose to sit somewhere that we could see, hear and pass a communal thermos of fruit juice and alcohol. Daniel Handler was dry and watching my Dan (who refused the thermos, by the way) watch him was part of my enjoyment. Handler opened with an anecdote about his research into the Eastern Shore, which he accomplished primarily through reading the Kent County News. He mentioned an article about a chicken house fire in which thousands of chickens lost their lives that was currently under investigation and a story about the heat-sensing abilities of snakes. From these articles, he deduced that the Eastern Shore clearly had a problem with arsonist snakes. Cue laughter. There were some uncomfortable moments—the kind where a speaker makes jokes about Judaism/Anne Frank, and you don’t know enough background to guess if it’s okay to laugh (it turns out it was because he was raised Jewish. Does this mean I can make Lutheran jokes?). Handler also talked about the name Lemony Snicket, and how he came to write books for children. For him, it started in childhood, with a serious dislike of books where everything magically worked itself out for the protagonist. He wasn’t a fan. Life is harder than that, though you may never have Count Olaf trying to get you.
Returning to Washington College, if only for an evening, proved to be a worthwhile adventure. Though I miss undergrad terribly, returning to campus creates a sense of pride rather than a sense of longing or regret. I miss the carefree lifestyle I led there, where my biggest worry was the next paper due or an upcoming test. Now I see WAC as a place that taught me how to learn. Through my liberal arts education, I grew to love research and writing. I would not be who I am today if I had not attended that Sophie Kerr weekend in 2003; my decision to attend Washington College is single-handedly the best decision I’ve made so far in my life. I have a second family made up of wonderful friends, an inquisitive mind fostered by my education, and the ability to return to a place where an author who writes books where children narrowly escape death gives a lecture that makes me realize there is nothing wrong with life being a bit difficult. It’s life, and WAC has given me a positive outlook on it.