Blast from the Past I

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

I was looking at my personal website from college (remember those?) and couldn’t resist…

Freshman Year Sponsor Group:
Great theory. Flawed execution.

sponsor group

Pomona puts all incoming freshmen into sponsor groups led by two sophomores. Each group lives in one hallway and does a lot of bonding activities in the beginning of the year. The idea is to cultivate a family-like atmosphere and network of social support for the year. Dating within sponsor groups (“sponcest”) was discouraged.

The head sponsors put the groups together and match up roommates. They relied solely on the information provided on our housing forms filled out over the summer. There was a list of dorm-relevant attributes that we had to rank on a scale of importance, e.g. my roommate’s cleanliness, the hall’s use of drugs or alcohol, how much you care about studying.

I didn’t put very helpful info – more about who I was rather than the type of roommate or room I wanted. I remember writing about my interests in culture and that my favorite music was “new age.” (People who asked for singles or wrote “I need my space” got their own rooms. Lucky.)

I ended up with a really bad roommate. She was inconsiderate, loud, and (the worst) an early riser. She embarrassed me in front of everyone, saying, “Don’t be so lazy. Take a shower.” She had a guy sleep over without advance warning. She bragged about her grades. Anyway, I won’t point out who she was.

This picture is from the end-of-year sponsor group dinner where the sponsors brought everyone’s housing forms and read them out loud. We had to guess who was who based on the form’s contents. My group knew me as soon as the sponsor read, “I am afraid of being left out.” As for clues on what possessed the head sponsors to put me and my roommate together, the only similarities I heard were: we both wrote we were “sensitive” and failed specifically to describe our ideal living mate.

My remaining years more than made up for it. I had awesome roommates/suitemates for the rest of college.

4 Comments | Tags: nostalgia

Sagehen Country

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

I miss college. Not the studying, stress, or pressures of figuring out a career path, but the social aspects. I think Asian parents do a great disservice when they tell their kids that all that matters in college is studying. Socialization is huge. I can’t say I’ve learned all the social skills I need to succeed in life, but I learned a lot about communciation, conflict, and relationships in college.

Dave and I dropped by our old campus Pomona College while driving back from the Inland Empire last weekend. We like to stop by when we can to walk around and reminisce. This time it was the weekend before the start of classes, and there were students walking around everywhere. We snuck into the dorm where we both got our start, Mudd-Blaisdell. It used to be a somewhat decrepit yet grand building. It’s still grand, but a lot more sterile since they redid the inside – no longer pink (so sad) but hospital-like grey and teal. At least there’s air conditioning now.

The biggest shock was the discovery that Gibson Hall, the only computer lab in freshman-dominated south campus, had been converted into rooms. These rooms do not have much privacy; the tall French-style window-doors were left intact, offering unhindered views inside. Dave wondered why they would get rid of the computers. I think it’s because everyone probably has a laptop.

We showed each other our freshman year rooms. My hall was in the exact same location as his, except one floor higher. I think we pretty much fit in and the students didn’t think we were trespassing (though we sorta were), though they looked pretty young to me. There was a crackling energy about the way they flung open doors and filed out in groups into the night, chattering away about who they still needed to fetch or commenting on each others’ fashion choices.

It made me think of how I felt during the earlier years at Pomona. The possibilities were endless – what I could learn, who I could meet, what I could become… It was such a free time. So much had not yet been decided.

While Pomona still uses tables in its website design (the horror ), at least its Coop store is now online. Dave plans to get the astonishingly low-priced fitted baseball cap with his favorite school logo:

cap