In September, my sister will begin her second year at Brown, and I'll be well into my third month of so-called real life. During shopping period, she'll probably call me for advice about which classes to take. I'll pass on two thoughts that won't answer her questions: don't second-guess yourself, and don't take notes on your laptop.
From my first day on College Hill, I knew I needed to make the best of this testing ground. Driving into Providence four years ago, I told myself that proverbial "best time of my life" was supposedly about to begin. Each moment until May 2008 was going to matter. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time at Brown second-guessing and re-evaluating how I spent my time at Brown.
It's hard not to cringe thinking how much time I spent checking my email when I could have been reading Nietzsche more carefully or, at least, laughing in the sun on the Main Green. Rarely, if ever, again will the stakes be so low and the opportunities as great as they are here.
When I return my rented gown and pack up my graded blue books, I'll need to quiet those thoughts. I still don't know whether I chose the right concentration, whether I worked too hard and missed out or didn't work hard enough. Brown's completely blank drawing board heightens the sense of personal responsibility that comes with growing up.
For the first time, a chapter of my life is ending of which I was the only author. The degree I'll get on Sunday is the degree that I chose. These are the friends I picked out among a pool of thousands. Only I am responsible for the return on this $160,000 investment. Core requirements have nothing to do with my failure to take physics or African dance. But that doesn't matter.
Undiminished are my scores of memories of intentional foolishness with friends, written or spoken words that shifted my thinking or the times I had to leave the dinner table debates in my house of 12 because my brain hurt.
So, Whitaker, instead of changing your grade option twice during shopping period and then regretting you took the course S/NC when you could have gotten an A, start accepting your choices now. Self-directed education becomes a lot harder when you constantly doubt your direction.
It's also less fun when you take notes on your laptop. You might think plowing through email while listening to cognitive science lectures is efficient. It's not. I can speak authoritatively on this.
I take notes on my laptop. I like to think it's because my handwritten notes can't capture my professors' eloquent lectures, but I do occasionally foray into multi-tasking.
When I realize I'm typing too furiously to be doing anything other than chatting online in half-English abbreviations, I self-consciously look around me to see whether other students have caught on. Usually, I notice a handful of partners in crime, listening to the lecture while talking to friends or, more likely, e-mailing group members about their next meeting, revising a contract for their start-up or corresponding with a lawyer about getting 501(C)3 status for their non-profit.
Thanks to the New Curriculum's flexibility, Brown students can not only choose diverse academic paths to complement extra-curricular pursuits, but get credit for them - through independent study courses with a faculty advisor - as well.
Of course, doing a few things at once may be a handy skill. Using campus wireless to apply for a summer job or keep track of a story assignment for the Brown Daily Herald, for example, was useful. But when I can step outside Brown even as I sit in the middle of a lecture for which my parents are paying a hefty sum, it's all too easy to forget why I'm really here.
I didn't come to Brown to figure out how to organize my inbox most efficiently or to discover which energy drinks have the highest impact. I came to Brown to indulge in four uninterrupted years of learning and thinking with people who don't look like me, don't think like me and have everything to teach me.
That's why I'm so glad Whitaker is here. Thankfully, she's catching on much faster than I did.
Mary-Catherine Lader '08 was features editor and editor-in-chief of The Herald. After a month traveling with her sister, she'll begin work in a renewable energy investing group at Goldman Sachs.
