On Finding Bryn Mawr College
I suppose that before I can go on to write the details regarding how my current life is here on the Hill, I should take a moment to talk (or rather write) about how I came to even find this place.
All I can really say is that it all started in my freshman year of high school. While everyone around me was still getting used to the fact that they weren’t in middle school anymore and high school was a whole ‘nother world compared to the former, I was already thinking about where I was gonna go in only a few short years. To be truthful, I didn’t think that I’d actually be able to go anywhere due to financial issues, but here I am. At any rate, this thought of trying to figure out what college was right for me at such an early time probably stemmed from my unsuccessful attempt at trying to get into a private school. Gee whiz, this post is already a scatter-brained mess, but I guess that sums me up quite nicely. To be fair, I did warn you all that my post would segway here and there because that’s just how I think. At any rate, I think it’s safe to start with the beginning: the failed effort to try to get into a private school and how that shaped my desire to think about higher education hella early.
All you need to know is that I come from a broke-as-hell part of Maryland, a state that is praised for being a mini USA unto itself and for its wealth that it boasts. Like most wealth, it is kept to precious few parts of its whole, leaving the rest of the state wondering why the heck everyone thinks we’re all supposedly in possession of so much dough. Montgomery County is one of such few places in all of the state that’s blessed with so much money. Meanwhile, Prince George’s County (or PG County) serves as its economically struggling rival. Both counties lie right on the border between Maryland and DC, and I’ve lived on both sides of the county line. This isn’t all to say that the two places are complete opposites of one another; I know for a fact that there are places in Baltimore and Western Maryland that are faring way worse than PG, but having lived on both sides of the fence, it’s interesting to think of the rumors of each place in retrospect.
When I moved from Montgomery County to PG towards the end of my sixth grade year, I was pretty devastated; I would once more face the pain of departing from friends that I’d made--people that I had just gotten to know--all over again. I moved from house to house every year up until my teenage years, sometimes moving multiple times in a single year. When I told people that I was moving, they never had anything nice to say; they often told me that I was going to end up stabbed in school, shot after school, bullied (more so than already) for gods only know what reason, and stuck with a shitty education. In hindsight, there were exaggerations here and there, but some of the words were true. The quality of education, for example, was a lot worse because of the huge difference in resources between school systems, but I made do.
As I went through middle school, I was frustrated with the endless standardized tests that were being thrown at my fellow classmates and I. They NEVER seemed to end. If we weren’t actively doing one test, than there were at least like three others that we were supposed to be guinea-pigging. Curiously enough, none of my former classmates from Montgomery had to put up with that guinea-pigging bs. Nope. They got the experience of a more hands-on education, more freedom, whereas we were taught only to follow strict orders, take all these whacky tests, and do textbook work that was about as interesting as staring at a slate of concrete for hours. I realize that this complaining may come across as immature and even entitled to some, but until you have lived through the experience of having an education like this and literally wanting to die to escape it (as so many of my friends and I wanted), then I don’t know what to tell you. But because of this tedious experience, I yearned for a chance to be free from it and applying to a private school seemed like the best route.
In case you were wondering, it was the National Cathedral School in Washington D.C that caught my attention. In my eighth grade year, I went through all of the steps to try to get in: trying to hold up and improve my grades, taking the SSAT, doing the interviews, so on and so forth. As chance would have it, I did not get admitted there (for which I am actually glad for in hindsight), but it gave me the experience that I needed to handle the college admissions game four years later with relative ease compared to some of my comrades (although I too struggled with it.)
(Trust me, I’m getting to the point of the post soon. I just feel like this context is very important for some reason. Please bear with me, fam.)
Well, within the first week of my freshman year of high school, I was determined to make do with what I’d be given at my school and I had already gotten so attached to the few friends that I made in my middle school who were with me now. In my English class, a group of seniors walked in, looking anxious yet mildly dead inside (must’ve been all that stress from junior year that got to them). They told us that high school would pass us by at the speed of a bullet and that while we were only lil freshmen at the moment, we’d be walking across the stage soon enough. Their speech, if you will, really struck me since we were just told during orientation week that statistically speaking, only half of us would make it to the end. A part of me was daunted and wondering what was the point of trying to get into college when an invisible half of my 900-member freshmen class were branded as failures before we even had the chance to really start our high school education. But the other, more stubborn part of me took it as a challenge to prove them all wrong, so I wanted to get an idea of what kind of a school would be perfect for me a mere few years later. There were a few other teachers (and plenty of other wiser upperclassmen) who encouraged us to pursue college despite the hurdles that would come with the application process and what would come before then.
“You might not realize it yet, but y’all are applying to college RIGHT NOW. Even if none of you know where you want to go yet, you’re doing it. Think about it: your grades all the way back from today, the first day of school, will follow you until the end,” one of the seniors said. Stay freaking woke.
Months later, my US History teacher would tell us to complete the Big Future College Search thing that’s attached to the CollegeBoard website. That is how I came to find Bryn Mawr. I didn’t really care about whether the college was public or private just so long as it wasn’t for-profit cuz those places are just nightmares wrapped in a bundle of deception, or so I’ve heard. Whether a place was co-ed or “women only” didn’t really matter to me, either since I didn’t want to limit my choices by only narrowing the colleges I’d find to fit only one of the two categories. Setting (rural, urban, suburban) wasn’t important to me, either since moving around my whole childhood gave me the ups and downs of all three settings. I wanted to keep my list as open as possible. However, the one factor that really shaped the schools that appeared on my “matched” list was the “100% financial aid need met” characteristic. I call it the plz-help-I’m-broke-af factor. (I mean it’s true for me, I ain’t foolin’ anyone.)
And then the moment of truth came: BAM! The list of “100% match” colleges and universities came forth and Bryn Mawr College caught my eye first. I mean it helps that it’s near the beginning of the alphabetized list, but what really grabbed my attention was the sigil and the name. I recognized Bryn Mawr as a Welsh name--what with its abundance of w’s and y’s in seemingly strange places-- and as a descendant of the Celtic people, I was drawn to it like a kitten to warmth. The name felt cozy. Homey. (Not to be confused with homie. xD) I saw the picture of the owl-adorned sigil and said, “I fucking love owls!” so I clicked the name and was blessed by the photo of the view of Rhodes from the Duck Pond. That was the view that sold my soul to this magnificent place, this in-real-life Hogwarts. Upon seeing that image I gasped from how freakishly gorgeous it looked and said “Yes!”
Since then, Bryn Mawr has been my first choice school.
--Backlogging; posted October 16th, 2016
