#65/2016
We were…read moreunloading the U-Haul bringing in all my sister's stuff and uh,
"Where'd she go?"
Sweaty and dirty after dragging her steamer trunk and tons of boxes up the stairs to her "temp double" room at Pearson's, we finally stumbled upon her:
At a tea for the President, my sister looking perfect and graceful in a navy blue gabardine pencil skirt, heels, silk blouse and pearls. Everyone was dressed up, looking cool as cucumbers.
Dirty and annoyed, I wiped perspiration and a wet strand of hair off my forehead, laughed and said,
"Ha ha ha, I'm glad *I'm* not going here!"
(I really wasn't the tea and equestrian type. I was headed for Fordham, UVA or Middlebury to learn Farsi and go to museums).
Not so fast.
My parents footing the bill wanted both their girls going to MHC.
There wasn't much of a campus life (I rolled my eyes at the caravans of boys from Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth who'd descend every weekend in this artificial way to socialize) but I didn't care about that. I was there for a purpose, to learn.
I threw myself into studies. I was either in the chem lab, at the college radio station spinning records or reading 6 or 8 novels a week in my dorm room for English and French lit classes, churning out papers.
Classes were small, often 15-20 women at a long oblong table. The largest class was about 75 at a "weeder" Organic chemistry class, the chem program being the second-ranked undergraduate chemistry program in the country behind MIT.
Garrett Goodyear, Peter Viereck, Joseph Brodsky, Shirley Chisholm, John Irving- these are the professors who taught at Mount Holyoke.
I took for granted lots of schools had luminaries like that- wrong.
You might have Kissinger "teaching" at Georgetown but he would make one brief appearance and let the TA teach the class.
These amazing people actually taught at Mount Holyoke (writer John Irving was booted for sexual harassment before I got there).
The campus is beautiful, the professors are top-notch. You'll get a fine education and appreciate it much more when you're older.
You'll poke fun at the nutty things like required PE (they are not kidding about PE credits needed to graduate and yes, my canoe class was taught by a former Olympic athlete) and institutions like milk 'n' cookies every night.
But, you'll be the first in line when they open the kitchen doors at 10pm for a study snack.
You'll also get tired of people asking if you took a swim in the lady pond (no) or if there are a lot of lesbians on campus (yes).
You won't know many of your classmates' names because all the professors address the students as "Miss [surname] so you'll laugh when you run into someone and say,
"Hello Miss Grasso!" "Well, hello Miss O'Hara! Did you finish the paper on King Lear?"
Surrounded by some of the most intelligent and driven women in the world (Mount Holyoke has an extremely diverse student body from 100+ countries), it was humbling but made you run even harder to achieve. I never worked so hard academically and the campus' isolation and elitism were sometimes suffocating.
For my mental well-being and interests, I set a goal to escape for junior year abroad and took off for Paris; it saved me.
But in typical Mount Holyoke fashion, I got credit for courses I took at the Sorbonne but the grades weren't factored into my GPA- really?
You can also take classes at any of the 4 area colleges including Amherst, (fellow Seven Sister) Smith, Hampshire or UMass. My sister practically lived at Amherst; I took a couple classes at UMass.
I like Mount Holyoke for many reasons. I dislike its profile and reputation still aren't as high as other colleges and universities like Yale and Harvard but that is slowly changing for the better.
I appreciate I had the good fortune of getting my undergraduate degree at Mount Holyoke and I recommend it for high-achieving women who want to make a mark on the world and challenge themselves.
