"These kids are truly barbaric!” my mind screamed as I walked into the child-infested art room of the local middle school. Fifteen paper planes were flying, a rental clarinet was honking, and scissors-wielding 10–13-year-olds were zooming across the room, reminding me more of Brownian motion than of an academic institution. I was a first-year and eager to rocket into the upper ranks of the learned and distinguished. This was my hell.
The year is 1984. The legal drinking age in Iowa rises to 21. The state’s largest vendor of beer, according to legend, loses three-quarters of its customers. Two years later, the Grinnell College campus pub closes.
While most colleges have some sort of mascot, a select few have unofficial ones that are even more popular amongst the student body. Here at Grinnell College, our unofficial mascot is unmistakably the squirrel.
Hang on. A squirrel?
It seems a bit odd at first. Why would we adopt a common, medium-sized rodent as an unofficial icon at a top-notch liberal arts institution? I admit I was a bit puzzled myself when I learned about the importance of squirrels to Grinnell College student life.
Half an hour ago, as I walked back to my dorm after class, a pair of gorgeous monarch butterflies flitted across my path. Now, I have seen butterflies at home in Oregon — the white-winged kind that are actually just a prettier species of moth — but these were not Oregon butterflies. Dancing in front of me was a pair of true, orange-and-black, fluttery-winged monarchs looking for all the world like two butterflies in love.
One of the things I was most amazed at when I began my first semester here at Grinnell was the vast diversity in the student clubs and organizations. There were so many choices at the Organizations Fair during New Student Orientation, I felt overwhelmed. Unable to choose, I signed up for everything I found remotely new or interesting.
Until Grinnell, I had lived my whole life in the East Coast Jewish bubble. I went to a private Jewish day school, ate Chinese food on Christmas, and attended more bar mitzvah ceremonies than you could shake a stick at. Don’t get me wrong, I love Manhattan kosher delis as much as the next girl, but I needed to meet different people in a new environment. This was hard for most of my friends and family to understand, and most thought I was throwing away my upbringing to live in the Iowa cornfields.
I spent spring break of my third year in a car, driving across the country. Dan, a student at Williams College, and Sara, a theatre major at the University of Washington, met me in Grinnell. We got stuck in some snow in Nebraska, took a stunning route through Sedona, Ariz., ordered Chinese food from a beach outside of San Francisco, and got Sara back to Seattle just in time for classes.
As my parents helped me unload the station wagon and carry my belongings up four flights of stairs on that hot afternoon in late August, the realization that this was the place where I would spend the next four years only added to my excessive perspiration. College. I was about to embark on the adventure of roommates, late night cramming, and defining myself.
I never expected it to be a one-year stint.
Twelve first-years. Twelve! While staff training week taught me how to handle pretty much every conceivable conflict I might encounter as a student adviser, or S.A., it left out that little part about any potential pandemonium that could arise when 12 nervous first-years begin their Grinnell experience on Read Second. Suddenly, my self-doubt about being an S.A. rose. My welcoming presence would play a key role in getting the college career of my first-years off to an acceptable start and convincing parents that leaving their kids in Iowa wasn’t such a bad idea.
I consider myself a pretty conservative dresser. My shorts are always mid-thigh or longer, my T-shirts cover my naughty parts in their entirety, and my swimsuit comes in only one piece. All in all, I tend to keep myself pretty well covered.
Unless it’s a Wednesday night in Burling. Because every Wednesday night after dinner, I participate in a magical event known as No Pants Wednesday.
