By Lizette Mier ‘22
You’ve followed me everywhere I’ve gone since I left your beaches and your Athenian streets. I saw your ghost in the palm trees and dry lands of my home in Phoenix. I felt your spirit, as I navigated language barriers in Denmark, however brief it was with Danish.
Read Moreby Rachel Desmond' ‘22
CW: Graphic descriptions
I think my fifteen-year-old self getting a black belt says a lot about who I am as a twenty-two-year-old. That black belt says that right as I was hitting puberty—a time when many girls have to relinquish the safety of a prepubescent body—I was learning how to take a punch.
Read Moreby Lauren Witt ‘24
Strolling through campus brings up a strange, subtle feeling, like stumbling upon a place you once visited in a dream. On the surface, nothing has really changed, but everything has a distinct, vibrant hue.
Read MoreBy Nabeela Zoss ‘23
CW: Unspecified student death
I wonder what happens to the students who die at Wellesley College.
Read MoreBy Dani Pergola ‘21
When I got to Wellesley, I planned to approach it just like high school. Do the right thing, do all my work, and get the good grades I deserved. It only took a month for me to realize I was totally fucked.
Read MoreBy Abby Schleichkorn ‘21
When you walk around campus, do you see the smiles shared, the friendships made, the tears shed, the place where the Peter used to pick us up, the exact place where you found out you got an A on THAT paper? I know I do. That is the unspoken language of place––I see my memories, and you see yours.
Read MoreBy Natalie Marshall ‘21
I’ve been sitting on my bed in my second-floor Sev room for hours, trying to make sense of my “Wellesley experience.” Or, more specifically, trying to put it down in a neat couple thousand words. My problem is that I want it to have a linear arc, a beginning, middle, and end.
Read MoreBy G.I. Titmouse
Dear Myself Four Years Ago Today,
Nope. We had no idea. Who knew? How could anyone know? The last four years have been insane. Here is a very incomplete list of 21 things to come between now and May—no, June—2021:
Read MoreBy Anonymous
When I reflect on my overall Wellesley experience, I find myself feeling mostly blessed, yet a little wanting.
Read MoreBy Jacqueline Roderick ‘23
CW: death of a parent
On a Saturday morning, three weeks after my estranged mother’s sudden death, I found myself walking in solitude along the shoreline.
Read Moreby Eleanor Nash ‘21
“Jell-O salad is one thing I know!” exclaimed my mom. Growing up in eastern Kansas in the 1960s and ’70s, she was on the receiving end of many Jell-O-based culinary experiments. Since their invention, Jell-O salads have evolved from show-stopping dishes at dinner parties and potlucks to quaint regional concoctions, a chronology that obscures both the marketing influence of the Jell-O Company and the creativity of everyday women.
Read Moreby Samantha Elalto Cuneta ‘21
Language forms the basis of a culture, and Taglish, a combination of Tagalog and English, is a daily norm in the Philippines. Yet the concept of synonyms is almost nonexistent. “Nakakatuwa” translates into “funny” in English, and is interchangeable with “humorous” or “witty.” In my country, the word is almost never used in these contexts. To translate “nakakatuwa” from its native form—to strip it of connotations built up through three centuries of colonization—would dissolve the culture that invented this word and prevent its people from adopting a permanent culture of indignation.
Read Moreby Emma Sullivan ‘24
CW: sexual assault
After I read Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese at the onset of quarantine, I thought, Yes, I just need to let my body “love what it loves.” I’d always brushed off the jokes about liking girls from the boys at my lunch table, or once from my father at Thanksgiving dinner. While I dodged the thought, I compiled a Straight-Girl-History for myself as refuting evidence. Now that I was in forced meditation, I had to address that, Yes, boys were fine, I guess. But girls made my breath hitch. I thought maybe, this is the thing I love and need to let myself love.
Read Moreby Anonymous
CW: description of anxiety
Monday morning: I’m walking to the Career Education Center with a donut in my hand. I’m eating it in the Pendleton parking lot when I think: there's a professor in Founders who I haven’t spoken to in a while. She gave me an extension on a paper once—a couple of papers, actually. But I haven't visited her since then. I guess I would have felt awkward having us both know the favor she did for me. I wouldn’t know how to broach the topic, or if I should even broach it.
Read Moreby Stella Ho ‘22
The thing is, the cool girl I admire is a character. More often than not, she’s a character defined by men, whether they’re the writers that created her or the male characters that love her. This worshipful gaze turns her into the idealized version of woman that I saw onscreen and took as a representation of reality. Struck by her glamour, I applied that same male gaze to judge myself and all the girls I met.
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