This morning, I learned that Obie Talk has been shut down by its creator. Over the past few weeks, there have been many discussions on campus, through which we have made collective progress on how to effectively moderate Obie Talk. None of us expected it to just disappear. Apparently, Will Adams-Keane would prefer to take it down now and to spend time creating his own community moderation system for the website, rather than to proceed as the college and student body were proposing, and as he had previously agreed to, with a group of volunteer student moderators starting immediately, working to remove hateful posts.

Regardless of today's turn of events, it is important to recognise that had this not happened, we would have continued to work hard to find solutions, and that if the problem of cyber-abuse reappears, the student body and administration will resume these efforts.

We, as students, have been working together with our institution to stop anonymous discrimination and hate speech, in order to build a safe and free community for everyone. Students have called for change in Obie Talk for years. By making our voices heard in the real-world discussions that have been taking place at Oberlin recently, we now have had an opportunity to enact that change. We are looking forward, to determine how the future of Oberlin's online community will address the long neglected problems of its past. We are considering how anonymity serves us as at Oberlin, and how we can maintain the benefits of that anonymity without endangering one another.

The first step was a student discussion forum on Friday, May 5th, arranged by the Oberlin Center for Dialogue. Around 50 students attended. The discussion was extremely productive and respectful, facilitated by the dedicated staff of the Oberlin Center for Dialogue, in order to allow everyone present the opportunity to express their views. Many students shared personal stories of how Obie Talk had helped or harmed them. It made for a very informative discussion and represented a true opening-up of the issue on campus. There is a summary of the minutes by a student here.

Concrete proposals to emerge included:

• Remove all anonymity - every user on Obie Talk or similar sites should be required to enter their name in order to comment.
• Entire anonymity - if you won't share your own name, don't share somebody else's. This system currently works at Grinnell College, under close moderation.
• A college-wide student survey should take place, asking what should be done next - although we don't intend to democratise the question of discriminatory language.
• Real life forums and support networks should be established, following the model of organisations such as 'Alcoholics Anonymous', to provide outlets for those who have been affected by Obie Talk or simply feel disconnected from our community in any way.
• A brand new online forum should be created with a regulatory system already in place.
• There should be separate areas of such sites for advice, support and hate speech.
• Remove the 'search' option from the website, so that you can't look up certain people's names.
• Shut down the website.
• Boycott the website.

The range of views were wide, and yet almost everyone agreed that the Obie Talk status quo could not continue. We need to find ways to move forward, to not fester in Gun Rights analogies along the lines of: 'the internet doesn't hurt people - people hurt people,' and to decide, as the vast majority of us seem to have, that targeted online discrimination and harassment must be stopped, and that it is well within our capability and social responsibility to do so.

The Oberlin Student Senate met to discuss their formal recommendation to the administration on behalf of the student body, based on the results of this student discussion. The idea of a college-wide student survey was supported and would have been initiated before the end of the semester. Perhaps, although Obie Talk is currently shut, it would still be a good idea for all students to receive a survey through which they could register their views as to what course of action should be taken with regard to such sites in the future.

Many students volunteered to be moderators of Obie Talk, and those students met to discuss what the exact moderation regulations would be last week. I will report on those decisions if and when they are made available.

Another student-run anonymous online forum, Obies Anonymous, has just launched. This website requires you to log in using your student ID, but the information is encrypted, so your comments remain entirely anonymous. However, this means that if a user repeatedly posts hateful comments, they will develop a 'reputation' by being 'flagged down' by other users, resulting in a decrease in the number of times they are allowed to post per day. The site also has the potential to block those who abuse it. If you flag a post as being about you specifically, moderators delete it immediately. The hope is that, in stark contrast to its predecessor, the culture of this site will be established as one of safety and support from the outset.

And suddenly, Obie Talk has gone. We cannot know what will happen next semester, but one thing is certain: Oberlin has begun to actively address the problem of cyber-bullying democratically and productively, and we will continue to do so should the need resurface. The absence of Obie Talk is a chance for us all to clarify exactly what, if anything, we gain directly from such a website, and if those benefits can in fact be found in other, safer, more positive ways. The past few weeks of discussion have yielded great progress and we are building the foundations for sustainable change. For now, goodbye for the summer from a cyber-abuse free Oberlin.

May 8th:
Neuroanatomy paper, due 5:00 pm
I'm writing an eight page paper about the impact of the anterior cingulate cortex on mood disorders. It's super interesting. So interesting that I'm writing a blog entry about it, rather than working on it, because it's due tomorrow and I'm only five pages in.

May 10th:
Spanish oral presentation
The last group project I have to present this semester. I presented one last week in my sociology class, and two weeks ago in neuroanatomy. So I'm pretty much over group projects...which is why we haven't started yet.

May 15th:
Sociology book review due
My last book review of the semester. And only five pages long! Not a huge mountain, BUT I have to read the book first. Have I started? Nope.

May 16th, aka OFFICAL FIRST DAY OF FINALS:
Bioorganic Chemistry final exam, 2:00 pm
The culmination of my entire, final semester of chemistry. When I say culmination, I mean it's going to be painfully cumulative. Painfully. I should have started studying for this test...at the beginning of the semester.

Spanish final paper, due 9:00 pm
One thousand words, about ANYTHING I could EVER want to write about. The possibilities? Endless. The only stipulation? Conjugation.

May 17th:
Sociology final exam, 9:00 am
The hardest part of this exam will be waking up on time.

Neuroanatomy final exam, 2:00 pm
Part of this is going to mimic all of our other exams, and part is going to be open-book and cumulative. So overall it's going to be hella hard. This needs to not happen to me before this test.

May 18th:
Sociology group report, due 4:30 pm
I think I said we gave an oral presentation last week. Now we have to write a formal report. I'M SO OVER GROUP PROJECTS. But it's going to be fine. Google Docs is such a gem.

and then I'm done.
HAPPY FINALS

Oberlin doesn't have ideal running weather all the time, but there are truly beautiful days, usually in the fall or early spring. We had a string of these last week and I decided to document my Sunday jog with a camera.

Often the hardest part of running is getting out the front door with your running shoes on. My high school coach used to inspire the crap out of us by saying, "The shortest opportunities are heartbeats. Don't waste a heartbeat." Sunshine and 65-degree weather help a lot in getting those first steps going.

The arboretum is the first place I went to run in Oberlin. I always like going back for a run. The Arb doesn't have miles and miles of trails, but its gravel paths are well-groomed and it's beautiful in any season.

Creeks run through the Arb, sometimes swollen, sometimes low. If the waters aren't too angry, you can find stones to hop on to cross and you don't have to dodge drives on the golf course.

A Shag-Bark Hickory. I learned that name during an Arb field trip in Bio 101 my freshman year and thought it was so perfect that I've recognized them every time I've seen them since.

Ladies? (more here)

The cemetery next to the Arb is a quick loop to run through. It's not as macabre as it seems, you often run into people walking their dogs, and it feels so homey that errant golf balls feel like more of a threat than ghosts.

Lest my badass-ness be in question, none of these apply to me. I park where I want, and I go to the park when I want. Don't try to leash this dog.

This is the Little Res. To most people in Oberlin, it's probably the only Res, but about 4 miles away next to an alpaca farm is the Big Res, where we run workouts from time to time. I would have absolutely nothing but pleasant memories of running around Little Res if it weren't for the workouts we've done there the last two years. Two years ago it was 40 degrees and raining, and this year was just hard. Every half-mile we would have to pick a card out of a pile coach had made. If we got the skull card, the next half mile would have to be 15 seconds faster than the last one.

They have no idea how delicious they are. Or maybe they do, and that's why they look so proud.

Running and other endurance sports are hobbies that I found somewhat late in life, and were some of the first things I liked that I discovered and practiced on my own (unlike singing, which choir and school musicals introduced me to, or soccer, which everyone in my family tried at one point or another). I think this is why I have really positive associations with going out for a run and a sense of pride in finishing long runs.

Actually, of course, that's a given. London is such an inexhaustible city that there's never going to be enough time to feel you've seen it all, and even though we've tried to take maximum advantage of every opportunity, the weeks are never long enough. Eventually the clock is going to strike midnight and we'll all turn back into pumpkins.

As my Facebook friends are probably sick of hearing, the semester has been spectacularly successful. My students have been a joy to teach: lively, committed, adventurous, generous, enthusiastic, hard-working, and frequently hilarious. I had lots of conviction when I selected this group that they were a special bunch, but you never know how the chemistry is going to work out. Fortunately, they've surpassed my expectations in every way.

(In case you didn't read the earlier post, there were two separate academic programs this semester. In addition to the students studying theater and modern British literature with me, another group has been studying British class politics with my colleague Marc Blecher. While I don't want to speak for Marc, I know he's been equally thrilled with his students, academically and otherwise.)

In my course on the London Stage, we will have seen a grand total of 29 productions (26 down, three more to go this week), ranging from the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries to brand-new plays, from the gilded splendor of West End theaters to tiny fringe spaces. Of the plays we've seen, I think the consensus has been that only two were real disappointments--which is a terrific batting average--and even those led to thoughtful and productive discussions about how they might have been improved. Most of our theater-going has been in London, but we took the train to Canterbury:

for a thrilling performance of Shakespeare's Henry V by the all-male company Propeller, and to Stratford-upon-Avon:

for three days to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's productions of Richard III, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest. The morning after we saw Richard III, the young actor who'd starred in it, Jonjo O'Neill, came to our bed-and-breakfast to talk with us about the role and his preparation for it.

And last week the magnificent Eve Best, whom we'd seen starring in John Webster's great Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi at the Old Vic Theatre, met with us to talk about that play and her approach to it.

Both of these actors were impressively intelligent, candid, and responsive to our questions; the chance to hear their perspectives about plays we'd studied and seen was a definite highlight of the semester. (For another perspective on the Stratford trip, Nicole Le blogged about it here.)

The Modernism course has been zeroing in on novels, stories, and poetry written in the first half of the twentieth century and mainly set in London. Discussions, usually student-led, have been intense and illuminating: it's a given that everybody will be prepared for every class and ready to engage with the text, and I rarely come away from class without having learned something or made a new connection. Our literary study has been enhanced by attention to modernism in the other arts, especially visual art; early in the semester we spent a week going to a different art museum every day, culminating in a huge exhibition on Picasso and Modern British Art at the Tate Britain, a show perfect for our purposes. We also attended a performance by the English National Ballet of four ballets set to music by Debussy and Stravinsky, including The Firebird and The Rite of Spring.

The politics students, meanwhile, took their own four-day field trip to the Northeast in order to meet with people who'd been affected by the miners' strike of 1984-85. Since I wasn't there, I'll let David Tisel describe it (among other events) in this blog post. Here they are taking a tour of the River Tyne:

And on the roof of Durham Cathedral:

While the curriculum has many events built in, there's also ample opportunity for students to go exploring on their own, and this group has taken full advantage of it. Every Monday I ask my students what adventures they've had, and they're always ready with stories about art galleries, movies, pubs and clubs, soccer ("football") matches, concerts, markets, hikes, and occasional out-of-town trips, such as to Oxford:

or the south coast:

And of course spring break was a chance to travel farther, including trips to Berlin, Prague, and Budapest, to Paris and Barcelona, to Edinburgh:

and to the highlands of Scotland:

If you'd like to hear more about what the students have been up to, check out more of their blogs here. I think I'll add just a few more shots of the students, hoping they'll suggest why the semester has been so much fun, and why it's going to be hard to let it go:

Obie Talk is a widely known about, online, anonymous forum, only accessible by current college students. It is used to say anything about anybody.

These are three screenshots, with expletives blacked out, that I took from Obie Talk this morning. The first one appeared about two months ago. I hardly ever look at Obie Talk, and I certainly never post on it. But everyone here knows about it, and there is a constant anxiety among many over what people are saying about you on there. My guess is that it is frequented by a small group of people, who use it as this forum for racism and sexism. It's a twisted kind of escapism. Someone told me they had seen a post about me, and I looked. It's quite hard to resist, sadly, when you know people are talking about you.

I think I'm a pretty stable and confident person. It didn't really hurt me to see those comments - they just seemed stupid. But the next morning, I remember walking out of my dorm and suddenly feeling so self-conscious. I couldn't stop wondering which of my classmates had written those things about me. It was that sick-awkward feeling that makes you just want to run away and hide in a little cave somewhere.

The same thing has happened to a lot of students I know. Girls, people from minority groups and first years are the common targets.

I have held off on blogging about this for several months now, because I hoped that something would be done to stop this. Nothing has changed, and the small changes proposed, which I will describe below, do nothing to address the real problem of immediate, anonymous victimisation of my fellow students and me.

I know that people have left Oberlin because of things that have been said about them on Obie Talk. The examples I've shown you are pretty mild, compared to a lot of comments out there. The insults are racist, sexist, homophobic, telling someone they are ugly or worthless, or all of the above in one. There are threats of violence and sexual abuse. Nobody would ever say these things in person - it's only under Obie Talk's cloak of anonymity that they feel they can.

I have refrained from giving examples that were addressed to specific people (apart from the one about me), because it's not my place to do so. But almost every insult on Obie Talk is aimed at a specific person. Commenters often address the victim directly, such as: 'Ruby Turok-Squire, you are...'. This is not passive aggression. This is not sensationalism. The intent is clear: to hurt someone.

Here is a student video made this year, about Obie Talk and its effects:

Here is an article written by the Oberlin Afrikana Community, responding in part to Obie Talk.

They say it all, really.

Obie Talk is run by a college junior, Will Adams-Keane, who set it up in his first year here, and seems to present himself as a crusader for free speech. He is, apparently, too busy to monitor the site fully. (Appropriate level of sympathy, please.) As a result, Adams-Keane has allowed anonymous student abuse to continue for the past three years. If this had happened at a university in England, he would have been suspended three years ago for his actions. I believe that universities should do everything in their power to allow students to feel included, accepted and safe. Bullying should never be tolerated. And here we are, at Oberlin of all places, being bullied.

Here's the front page of this week's Oberlin Review:

Volunteer forum moderation? Dean Eric Estes is quoted as saying, 'I don't think the administration should be monitoring Obie Talk. I think the key is empowering students to help shape acceptable discourse for themselves.' He suggests a system of 'flagging', whereby a post will be automatically removed if it gets a certain number of flags. Estes does not seem to understand that the damage of a hateful post is immediate and irreversible.

Here's a quote from the same article, from my boss, Ben Jones: 'There is always something to be learned from the expression of viewpoints, even those we may personally find repulsive.' Does he have any understanding of what it's like for someone to read that they should be 'put in the fields to pick some cotton to get your lard-ass into shape', as a recent post told a certain individual to do? Does he understand that as soon as hate speech has been published online, the damage is done? Moderation comes after the fact. All it really takes is one comment to deeply hurt someone and ruin their lives at Oberlin.

I went to see President Marvin Krislov, to ask about Obie Talk. I told him that if the truth about Obie Talk got out, Oberlin's reputation would be gone. His response was that every college has this kind of website and there's nothing he can do about it. The college says it's not their site, so it's not their problem. This is a website run by a current Oberlin student, exclusively for the use of current students, with access restricted to the Oberlin campus, and yet it's not their problem?

Krislov also told me that he's never been on Obie Talk. He doesn't want to know what's going on. The administration turn a blind eye and pretend that the problem has gone away.

It would be easy for Oberlin to block Obie Talk, because it is only accessible if you are using the Oberlin College WiFi network, or have an Oberlin College email address with which to log in. God forbid, they could even tell their very own student, who has been running this bully forum for three years, to shut it down!

Here's another simple solution: remove the anonymity. If this happened, students would have to take responsibility for what they said, and there would be no problem. The right to freedom of speech is only a right if you speak under your own name and take ownership of your opinions.

If racist graffiti appeared on campus, would the college remove it? Yes. Just because Obie Talk is one step detached from such immediacy does not change the nature of discrimination and does not mean that we should tolerate it when we would not in real life.

I am writing this blog because as a prospie, I would have liked to know that I was practically guaranteed to get cyber-bullied at my new university. If I had known about Obie Talk, I might well not have come to Oberlin. I believe that all students have the right to an education without oppression. It is the job of the institution to protect this right, and Oberlin is failing to do so.

Obie Talk makes me ashamed to go to Oberlin. There is no good in Obie Talk. It goes against everything that I associate with this college: inclusion, acceptance, and freedom to be who you want to be. It is Oberlin's dirty secret. But I don't see why it should be anymore, when we all know it is happening, and we all want it to stop. I speak on behalf of all of my friends here. Obie Talk must be shut down, before it destroys the free, inclusive society that Oberlin represents to so many.

If you feel strongly about this issue, please contact Dean Eric Estes (eric.estes@oberlin.edu) and our college president Marvin Krislov (marvin.krislov@oberlin.edu), to express your views. I'll make sure to keep you updated.

[Thursday, May 3rd: As a point of information, I would like to add a quote from page 57 of the Oberlin Rules and Regulations 2011-12, bottom right of page: 'Oberlin College deplores incidents of discrimination or harrassment wherever they occur - for example between students, between employees, and between students and employees. The college is especially mindful of its obligation to seek learning opportunities for its students. Discrimination or harassment, whether overt or covert, may directly or indirectly have a negative impact on students' abilities to learn. Discrimination not only may have undesirable educational and psychological consequences; it is also against the law. Perpetrators of such behavior can be subject to College adjudication processes, including disciplinary action up to and including termination, suspension, and expulsion as appropriate.'

In that context, consider this letter to the editors of the Review from Estes and Jones, in which they say: 'many thanks to Will for working with us to address this sensitive and complex situation in a fair and balanced way. We remain confident that ObieTalk can be a place that is beneficial to all students, ideally to the point that the administration can forget it even exists -- a very welcome concept to both of us.']

But how else can you work this out? One obvious solution, it seems to me, is to reduce the price of college, which reduces debt in the first place and makes it a more viable option to more people. If more people can pay for college, not only will more people go, but colleges won't feel pressured financially to base admissions decisions on financial aid. (Many colleges have need-blind admissions, but not all; Oberlin is "need-sensitive," but not need-blind.) So how do you do that?

Option one: cut the frills. Oberlin is probably fairly restrained in this respect, but other places aren't: other places aren't. A lot of schools today, Oberlin included, have really nice facilities. A lot of these are beneficial. Oberlin has some unusual amenities that are probably a good idea for students' mental and physical health: an open craft room (with looms--Emma wove a few scarves in there); the Multicultural Resource Center; the Sexual Information Center; the Student Health Center and its free cold care kits; a good counseling center; useful things like that. But we have some fluff, too. Therapy dogs on Wilder Bowl during finals and midterms: wonderful, but probably not essential, especially considering the proximity of the Ginko Gallery kittens. Similarly, I like the pool, and swimming is excellent for exercise and stress relief. Is the dry sauna equally important? Probably not (although since it exists already, I wouldn't say we should get rid of it). Do we need so many different lines in the dining hall? Again, probably not; a vegetarian/vegan line, a meat line, and a selection of sandwich materials would probably suffice. My parents were impressed at the quality of the rooms here; apparently, carpeting in a dorm room wasn't a thing a generation ago. Would it save money if rooms weren't carpeted? Probably, at least as an initial outlay when dorms are being built. But since that isn't happening right now, it's not terribly useful as a reduction measure.

So the cutting-frills option is fairly superficial and a bit of a bust, at Oberlin, anyway. Perhaps straight-up cost-cutting isn't the way to go, or at least not on its own. Maybe making it easier for people to pay would be better. Can I think of anything that might cut to the heart of access, debt, and admissions?

Absolutely: make them more intimately connected.

I was discussing a theory of mine a while ago that students should take out loans for the entire cost of their education directly from the college they attend. Such a program would be very difficult to get off the ground unless the school had a very large endowment to begin with, but, once in place, it would become self-sustaining: the alumni pay for their education, with interest, and that money goes back to finance the educations of the new crop of students. Advantages: encourages acceptance based on demonstrated responsibility, not financial status; removes any kind of financial edge or disability that students of different backgrounds might have; places entire responsibility for funding education on the student, not the student's parents; college has an incentive to keep costs low. Disadvantages: might bias the college into accepting only those interested in highly profitable fields; students with a few irresponsible moments in high school might get passed over; and, as I said, virtually impossible to start.

My friend, in exchange, proposed a tithing system: alumni pay the college a set percentage of their income for a set number of years. This could be the rest of their lives, or until they retire, or until they hit a certain amount--whatever the college in question decides. This could function, as my theory did, in exchange for a full ride, or it could replace financial aid and/or traditional loans. Advantages: need is not an issue; there is no pressure to pay back a certain amount by a certain date; colleges profit quite a lot in the long run, possibly lowering costs for later generations of students. Disadvantages: again, not practical to get started.

Neither of these would ever actually work, and I recognize that. Still, I think some of the ideas behind them are worth consideration. I think that parents should play a smaller role in paying for their children's education. I deeply appreciate my parents' help with my own college bills (read: paying most of the cost), and I know they're more than willing to do it, but I wish it wasn't necessary. They were able to pay for college with very little help from their parents and not much debt; why can't I? The answer, of course, is that the cost of college has gone up so dramatically and at so many times the rate of regular inflation that it's virtually impossible to do so. To get a job that will pay for a college education, you almost have to already have a college education. Something somewhere has to change. I say the change should be twofold: reducing the cost of college as much as possible without harming the quality of education, and changing the way it's paid for.

For financial aid offices, it's pretty much a given that parents will bear the brunt of the cost, and I don't think that's fair. It's not their college experience--why should they get stuck with the tab? They have other things to pay for: houses, retirement, other children, aging parents, perhaps even their own school debts. For the most part, we college students have no responsibilities other than to take care of ourselves. Let us do that. Trust us with that. Don't force us to impose on people, no matter how willing they are to be imposed on. Furthermore, if schools looked at students strictly on their own merit, and not on the merit of their parents' incomes, all admissions would be, by necessity, need-blind. I think this fact alone makes my proposals slightly less ridiculous.

Returning to idealistic dreamland for a moment, I'd like to point out Oberlin's motto: Learning and Labor. I'm taking the Oberlin History class; I know about this stuff. When the college was founded in the 1830s, the plan was to have students, male and female, study for four hours a day and spend another four hours in some kind of manual labor (clearing land, cleaning rooms, making clothes, raising crops). This was in keeping with Oberlin's philosophy of producing wholesome, self-sufficient graduates who would go out into the world to spread a particular kind of Christian perfectionist (idea that people can make themselves perfect) doctrine by personal example. Physical work was supposed to join with mental work in keeping people humble, productive, and practical: you raised the food you ate or cleared land for academic buildings. Not only did it help defray educational costs, it was a built-in community service requirement. The book we were reading never said so explicitly, but I think part of the impetus behind this was to get students in the habit of taking care of themselves--and of others, when possible.

That's the theory, and it's a pretty good theory, in my opinion. It didn't work out so well in practice; the students simply weren't as efficient or as effective at doing the work as full-time workers would be, and the plan was eventually scrapped. It lives on in a modified form in the Bonner Scholarships, in which students commit to some set number of hours of community service in exchange for financial aid. That's usually work in the community, though, not work for the college, so it doesn't bind "learning and labor" or college and student as tightly as it might. RAs get free housing, I believe, which is a similar philosophy (you work for the college, the college gives you a break). I think it's possible, when signing up for student jobs on campus, to have the money go directly to your student loan, so you can repay as you go--but, again, that's not directly paying the college. If there were a way to get your paycheck to be deducted from your term bill, perhaps . . . .

The point of all this idealistic, semi-ideological rambling is to say that there's something a little bit broken about the way that paying for college works right now. I don't know how we should fix it; I'm sure there are other people who've spent a lot more time researching it than I have, and they don't seem to be coming up with anything either. But I think it's something that should be discussed and not simply accepted.

At the beginning of this semester, the news spread: Harry and the Potters were coming. To be hosted by the Oberlin Harry Potter Alliance (for which I am webmistress), the first ever Wizard Rock band, would be playing a concert at the 'Sco. The news spread quickly amongst Oberlin's Harry Potter inclined, and the Harry Potter Alliance got to work on making sure their visit went as smoothly as possible.

(For those who have no idea what Wizard Rock is, a rundown can be found here.)

To those of us who spend a significant amount of time in the Harry Potter fandom (spoiler: I'm kind of obsessed), this was all hugely exciting. To a lot of people Harry and the Potters are their own brand of celebrity; for a lot of us they were our very first concert. Making sure everyone (including the band) had fun was a big deal to us in the HPA. And we figured it out: Their check was ready, the hotel rooms reserved and paid for, a schedule set up. We even had a scheduled time for them to meet with the Harry Potter ExCo (which I co-teach), where we would all sit around and geek out, all the while analyzing the Harry Potter phenomenon through the lens of literary analysis and sociology. It was gonna be awesome.

And then. And then.

And then came the actual day.

Here's a rough timeline of what went down on April 12th, aka Harry and the Potters Day:

Noon: I check my email and see that OHPA's events coordinator (let's call her K) has written to inform me that the band is running a little late on their trip from Bloomington to Oberlin, so they'll probably be arriving on campus around 7:00pm instead of around 5:00pm. (This is important because I'm the one scheduled to guide them around campus when they first arrive)

12-5:00pm: The usual Oberlin day. Class, food, shower, homework, writing...tumblr, etc.

5:20pm: K calls in a panic: "HARRY AND THE POTTERS' CAR BROKE DOWN IN COLUMBUS." "WHAT. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO." "MEET ME AT THE 'SCO IN FIVE MINUTES."

5:30-6:30pm: This time is mainly taken up by us panicking, as well as going about the restructuring of the day: Rearranging things like sound check with the people who run the 'Sco, etc. Mainly panicking, even when we didn't really need to. This is also when I talk to Paul DeGeorge (Harry year 7) on the phone and we arrange to push the meeting with HexCo (Harry Potter ExCo) from 7 until 9. I email the class to tell them of the change.

6:30-6:30pm: They call back saying that it's their alternator that's malfunctioned and that, well, they have to go rent a car in order to get here. Can't imagine what a long day it's been for THEM at this point. Estimated time of arrival pushed back to 10pm at the earliest, 10:30 (after the opening band--the awesome Crispin Swank Sextet--goes on). HexCo event canceled. Sadness.

6:35pm: I realize that this rapid chain of plan-changes means that I can go to the Oberlin pre-screening of the new HBO show Girls (written by, directed by, and starring Lena Dunham, an '08 Oberlin grad). I am enthused.

6:35pm-9:00pm: Girls screening!

9pm-10:00pm: Hang out in Decaf with K and Jenna (our OHPA leader). More HPAers and HexCoers show up. We commiserate about our strange fate that night. We spend some time looking at each others' tumblrs and screaming at each other about our fandoms (in a friendly way). This is why I love them.

10:10pm: Harry and the Potters arrive!!! We help them unload, set up their merch table, etc.

10:45pm-12:30am: The actual concert. Practically a religious experience. The fact that I go to a school where that entire audience knows all the words to Harry and the Potters songs makes me really happy.

1:00am-2am: We get to hang out with the band. We head to the Feve, the main bar in town. Some kind person buys them drinks. My HexCo co-instructor, Kellie, gives them S.P.E.W. badges. It's a good time.

2:15am-2:45am: The bar closes, so we stand in Tappan Square for a while and just chat. A lot of jokes were made about Philadelphia, and the band says they want to make this an annual thing. YES, PLEASE.

Then we all parted ways and us HPAers were left reeling because WHAT THE EFF JUST HAPPENED THAT NIGHT WAS SO COOOL.

In the spirit of Chinwe's guide to surviving finals (which, incidentally, I didn't follow. I was too busy being emotionally involved during finals to worry about anything other than getting through without breaking into tears) I'd like to present the aspiring student with this collected wisdom. Think of it as a window into the life you will be living in a year. Kidding.

1. Move around. We bloggers have practically written a thesis on the soporific powers of womb chairs. It's the truth. Plus, they're undignified (like life). Also, Mudd has this Panopticon thing going on that can be kind of distracting. I value my privacy over my dignity, so I usually go for the womb chairs. The way to avoid falling asleep is to set limits for yourself: I like to spend an hour polishing off reading for one class safely ensconced in a womb chair, and then go down to A-level to work on an essay or Hebrew homework or something. This is how I get all my exercise these days, sidenote.

2. Take breaks. Griff suggests putting your face against the cool glass of the windows looking over Wilder Bowl. I suggest washing your face.

3. Speaking of dignity, lose it. The nice thing about going slightly crazy (I realize this is not an option for some people, with social lives and jobs and reputations to uphold) is that you can stop worrying and really get into researching Jewish immigrant life in the early twentieth century.

4. Get a really good soundtrack. Preferably it should be interesting, slightly embarrassing, and, depending on your current level of mental health, not in a minor key. The wrong music can freak you out; the right music can give you the energy to keep going through an evening of George Eliot. I will not lie, I have a playlist expressly for mornings after I spend nights in Mudd, and it's called irrationality. This is what it looks like. It is short because, as mentioned before, I like to switch around. Generally this length is good because when I get tired I can switch to something equally weird, like one of the numerous Harry Potter soundtracks I possess.

4. Bring water. My parents, like parents everywhere, are constantly nagging me to eat healthily (given that one of my main food groups at this point is Chocolate Cake, they may have grounds for concern), and, following some health problems early in the semester, to "drink lots of water." Plus, Mudd for some reason always makes me feel really dried out, which can put a serious damper on my mood/productivity. I am a fan of lime water, and I also always bring a chapstick.

5. Find one night a week when you can go to bed early. For me this is Wednesday, because for some reason, my Wednesdays are less crazy than the beginning of the week (crazy amounts of work) or the end of the week (crazy amount of fiction reading).

I want people to love Mudd, and obviously some people already do, but I hope that not too many people do because then it might be crowded at 2 AM, and one of the best things about staying up until 2 AM studying is the peace and quiet. I realize I am shooting my self in the foot here. On a related note, keep New Hampshire a secret.

[1] Actually, there totally are things to do on a Friday night, I just choose not to do most of them.

I lived in Santa Elena for 22 days, and I think we made a passing acquaintance. When we arrived, I didn't even know that there was a Santa Elena (a town of 6500, ten times larger than the village of Monteverde for which the region is named). By the time we left, I was critiquing the inaccuracies on the tourist map.

Inaccuracies aside, this map is as good as any, though of course no map could show you Monteverde any more than blue ink could show you the sea. ¹ The Cloud Forest School is in the middle, at the top of a (very large) hill. The triangle of streets in the left corner is the heart of Santa Elena, the town to the west of Cloud Forest, where we would stop after school for smoothies, local Monteverde ice cream, and twenty-cent bananas. From Santa Elena, it was only a twenty-minute walk to my house (north, on the winding dirt road). My fellow Obies were farther off the beaten tourist track: they were living in La Cruz, a beautiful district an hour's walk up the mountain. The road to La Cruz is not even shown.

We were comfortably mapless by the second day, but so much more than navigation made me feel at home. My companions and I were doing difficult, fulfilling work as grounds volunteers at the Cloud Forest School, and we were constantly thanked and praised. "Buenísimo!" Eduardo would say as I tamped down the earth around a newly-planted fence post. "Perfecto!" Milton would add.

The Cloud Forest School was founded by local and international families as a bilingual kindergarten. It now teaches 200 students from preschool through 11th grade, focusing on environmental education and bilingualism. Both are practical in this hub of ecotourism, but vital in a changing world.

The small campus and the vast trail network both need constant maintenance; that's where Eduardo and Milton come in. With the help of parents and international volunteers, they build fences, paint rooftops, grade paths, haul gravel, mix concrete, till soil, and patch leaky pipes. For three weeks, during our Winter Term, we helped.

Each day, I would rise around seven and make a breakfast from local eggs and Monteverde cheese. I'd walk to school with my friend Elizabeth, trekking up the the dirt road as the sun burned the mist off the mountains. We'd arrive at nine and read or rest or laugh with our fellow Obies until Eduardo or Milton wandered by. Then we'd grab tools (sometimes ones we knew the words for already, but often we'd have to be shown) and split into groups to do the day's work.

The work was made easier with good conversation. The six of us got close, aided by friendliness, curiosity and Elizabeth's talent for asking good questions. Most of the pictures are of us being silly, like after a long day of dusty work moving concrete bags:

Or on a wander in Santa Elena with a papaya named Paul:

But we shared secrets as well as snapshots, and we were homesick together often. Our long days gave us time to talk about anything, in English and halting Spanish. For the most part we enjoyed our work. We also looked forward to our long lunch break; we'd spend it at a small, sunny picnic table, watching kids run and jump like puppies, or gazing out over the mountains as they melted into sky:

After work the six of us would walk down to Santa Elena for a treat. I bought bananas by the half-dozen, and I'd eat every one on the walk to my house. Once I was home I'd make a snack and write in my journal on the front porch, the pages lit by the waning sun.

When my host mom and brother got home, we'd have dinner, always a variation on the same delicious theme. The silent house would be filled with light and conversation; I would leave the table with a stomach full of rice and a head full of Spanish. Unless Flor and I went down to the pulperia, I would go to bed by nine, listening to the wind howl against the tin roof. The routine suited me; my days in Monteverde were timed to the sun, but defined by good food and conversation.

The ordinary tethered me to the mountains, but the extraordinary, too, made me feel at home: like we were not merely passersby, but witnesses to Monteverde's secrets.
There was the day we followed a handpainted sign down the side of a mountain to a waterfall. In the valley we found a small cataract, nothing like the sign. Pretending to be satisfied, we continued on what we thought was a loop, only to reach the end of the trail in front of a magnificent cliff. The water, which fell at least thirty feet, shimmered with light.

That same week, we took a tour on horseback led by a friend of Milton's. We rode our placid horses down and down and down, into a valley gouged by playful volcanic fingers. The pool at the bottom, fed by hot springs, was merely beautiful -- until we were told that our tour guide had built it by hand. By hand? Pouring concrete, setting stone, on this ledge above the river? At the bottom of a valley, how else?

When we towelled off and rode back up into the hills, our guide's wife had prepared tea and pastries for us. Our taxi driver arrived while we were still eating, but instead of packing us up, our hosts invited him to sit and eat. This is Monteverde. Everybody knows everybody. And everybody welcomed us, too.

The pulperia I mentioned above was owned by Flor's best friends. Although I could barely understand their Spanish, I rarely had to, especially with Andreis, Emily's eight-year-old brother. I would be his horse or his motorcycle or his racing companion -- all I had to understand was "Vete!" and "Gané!" Andreis always won. We would play for hours in the sodium light until his family closed the store.

It was towards the end of our trip that we opened a glass door into a cafe and a bird flew into it. It fell to the ground, stunned, and did not resist as I scooped it into my hands. What to do? Staying near would only frighten it. But it was so helpless. I placed it on a branch and backed away. When I came to check on it ten minutes later, it had taken flight.

You could fashion a pretty good metaphor out of that, but for me it was enough that it flew.

- -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- -

[1] "Monteverde" is used to refer to the whole region, but Monteverde proper only has about 500 residents. The long road to the east of the CFC is the main road of the village, founded in 1951 by Quakers seeking refuge from the draft. The 20 families became dairy farmers, built the famous Cheese Factory, and set aside land for the Monteverde Cloud Forest reserve, setting in motion the events which have led to the region's reputation as a Mecca of ecotourism.

So, for any of you who arrived at this blog post by Googling "Oberlin Super Smash Bros. major" congratulations, you've come to the right place. Unfortunately, we don't exactly offer a major in Super Smash. In the past, there's been a student-run course (we call 'em ExCos round these parts) in theory and practice in SSB, but as many of us students know, one course does not a major make.

I know that Oberlin gets some flack for offering "frivolous" courses sometimes. At first glance, ExCo courses may seem a bit silly. Classes in Lady Gaga? Playing hockey like your mom? Calvin and Hobbes? The West Wing? It looks like all we're doing is playing and having fun, but I would like to offer this consideration before casting a critical eye on what we do here:

When learning, it's not just about content, but intention, meaning, involvement, and approach to the process itself.

What I mean is that through the ExCo department (it IS a real department at the awesome and accredited Oberlin College), we learn from our peers by teaching them. We learn about ourselves through teaching. I'm probably paraphrasing some famous person here, but I do believe that the best way to learn is to teach. And for the sheer number of educators that exit through Oberlin's doors, I think it's a great thing that we can cut our teeth in teaching with support from our school and our classmates.

I am living testiment to this; I'm in the middle of my third semester of teaching Learning to See: My Camera and Me (short version: it's a course in training the photographic eye and, regardless of the equipment you own, you can take and share meaningful and compelling photos). The class is a bit of a choose your own adventure: you have a set of projects you must complete by the end of the semester, but it's up to you in what order you choose to complete them. Because of this, every class is a bit of a surprise, a bit unexpected, and always a learning experience for all of us present.

I'm going to be a teacher one day. Heck, I'm already a teacher now, and I exercise it every day. Leading an ExCo is a more focused way to do so, though, and it twists my mind up in such good ways thinking about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and what impact of the things we learn today will have on the things we learn tomorrow.

I think that ExCos are amazing, and I think that the ability to experiment with course material and class structures with students at the college level is an amazing experience. This coming semester I will be co-teaching (fingers crossed at the ExCo committee, since they're currently at the deciding stage of the application process) a course in social media (#SoMeXco!!! It's going to be amazing!!!) with Barbara Sawhill and Ben Jones. We're going to flip the class, blog it in real time, offer our coursework to anyone online, and probably about a half-dozen other structures, projects, and assignments that could only happen in a course like this with instructors like this with educational content like this.

Seriousness done. Fun times can happen now. (Fun times plus serious times happen all the time at Oberlin. It's just that cool a place.)

Since at least a gazillion people now think we have a major in Super Smash Brothers, I'm here to offer you readers two things: a short list of Oberlin alumni currently working in the gaming industry and game design and a proposed set of courses from the upcoming 2012-13 school year course catalog that could be shaped into an independent major in SSB.

Between our awesomely awesome alums, we cover independent, self-created companies (WhileTrueFork, Eccentric Robot Studios, Nomuda Games, Panciccolo, SMASHWORX Entertainment, Fear of Software, The Game Agency, The Go Game, and Discovery Bay Games) and the big guys (Kabam, Naughty Dog, NOMAD, Gameloft, MTV's Social Games Group, Gazillion Entertainment, UNICEF Sim, PopCap Games, Nintendo, and Microsoft Game Studios).

Impressed much? I am. And that's just what a quick LinkedIn search did for me. I'm sure there are dozens more Obies developing and creating gametastic things out there in the world, not mention hundreds of Obies happily playing their creations.

Want to join their ranks? Mayhaps as a Super Smash Bros. independent major here at Oberlin College? Here's my take on what needs to be done if you want to major in smashing and such:

Physics: Jumping and punching successfully takes a lot of science. Consider taking elementary physics I and II, Mechanics and Relativity, Modern Physics, Computational Physics, Physics of Materials, and Applied Quantum Mechanics.

Comparative American Studies: Dynamics aren't just about physics, but relationships between characters in battle. Courses in Visible Bodies and the Politics of Sexuality, Transnational Identities: National Borders, and Global Desires, Narratives of Passing might contribute a bit of perspective.

Politics: Specifically, courses on wars and power. Why do we fight, and what comes of it?, courses in Political Theory and Political Action, and Explaining Social Power: Classical and Contemporary Theories might be relevant here.

Sociology: The study and reaction to human dynamics. Some possible courses: You're Not the Boss of You: The Understanding of Political Revolutions, Intro to Sociology: The Sociological Imagination, The Sociology of Sport, The Sociology of Popular Culture, and War, Weapons, and Arms Control might be a good starting point.

Psychology: Why do we do what we do? Why do we smash? Classes in Intro to Peace and Conflict Studies, Seminar in Social Conflict, and Social Psychology might be valuable.

Physical Education: Just for kicks (teehee see what I did there?) and giggles, how about: yoga, Strength Training, Running Conditioning, Cardio Kickboxing, Power Hour, and Core Training (and if relevant, basic and advanced self-defense for women).

There's definitely some overlap with the Peace and Conflict Studies concentration and the interdisciplinary Gender, Feminist, and Sexuality Studies courses as well.

Perhaps the senior capstone would be a live-action Super Smash? That could be amazing!

So, yes, I do believe that if you dream (or if UberFacts dreams it first) that you could possibly teach it. Or major in it. Or something along those lines. Oberlin's just awesome like that.

What does it mean to be need-sensitive? Well, our standard line when the question comes up is to say that, for most students in our applicant pool, need does not have an influence on our admissions decisions. Generally we'll also talk about how we're committed to meeting 100% of the demonstrated financial need for all admitted students, and how that necessarily affects our consideration of need during the admissions process. While financial aid is one of the top three expenditures at Oberlin, the amount of funds available is still finite, and we do have to take that into account in the admissions process. If, for instance, we admitted a class comprised entirely of students who could make no financial contribution toward their education, we simply couldn't afford it. That's an extreme case, but even taking into account the natural mix of income levels a college might see in their applicant pool, there are still very few institutions that are wealthy enough to afford to be completely need-blind and still meet 100% of demonstrated need.

Instead, most institutions have to make a choice between those two ideals. Some will choose to practice need-blind admissions, but then find themselves using what's known as "gapping" in their financial aid packages, where they calculate a student's financial need to be a certain amount, and then either offer a financial aid package for a lesser amount or include a huge loan component. We think it's unfair to admit a student who really has no financial possibility of attending, so we've chosen what we believe to be the lesser of two evils in incorporating need sensitivity into our admissions selection process.

The fact remains, though, that even if need isn't a factor for most applicants, it's still a factor for some applicants. We never emphasize this, and we don't even like to think about it. It makes most of us in the admissions office at least a little uncomfortable, and sometimes it's really upsetting. Bringing this up certainly never produces a fun conversation with a prospective student or their family. It's also true that we prefer not to talk about this because we don't want to discourage anyone from applying to Oberlin just because they have financial need. We do admit mostly applicants with some degree of need-- about two-thirds of our student body receives some kind of need-based financial aid. We're even particularly generous toward admitted students who have a high level of financial need. Our Access Initiative allows us to eliminate or nearly eliminate the loan component from the financial aid package of very high-need students who qualify for a Federal Pell Grant. In short, we accept lots of students with financial need, and even high levels of financial need, and we work very hard to provide financial aid packages that make Oberlin an affordable option for all of those admitted students.

However, need does influence some decisions. We do accept some students on the edge of admissibility because they can contribute to the costs of an Oberlin education. On the other hand, we invariably find ourselves waitlisting or denying some students each year who are otherwise well-qualified and appealing, due to a high level of financial need.

This may come as a big surprise to you, but it's not really a big secret. Most schools do this, although, like those of us at Oberlin, most college reps will avoid talking about it like the plague. But we know. Savvy high school guidance counselors know as well, and sometimes they'll even bring it up when talking to us about their students. In the spirit of fairness and equal distribution of information, I wanted to make sure that you know, too. If you find yourself trying to make sense of a decision from Oberlin that is different from what you expected, just keep in mind that, among all of the other factors we consider in our holistic review, ability to pay may have had an influence on our final decision. But please don't call our office asking if you've been waitlisted or rejected in part because of financial need, because you will definitely not get a straight answer-- not even from me.

(Actually, calling the admissions office to inquire about the reasons behind an admissions decision is never a particularly good idea, and generally won't produce a satisfying experience. Because we do a holistic review, we can't point to a single factor that made our decision. We can't replicate the full decision-making process for you, either, since each application goes through so many layers of review, including a final, undocumented discussion in committee. Calling us might allow you to vent your feelings of frustration or disappointment, but it won't really help you find out more about why we made our decision and definitely won't convince us to change our decision.)

Saturday was gorgeous--warm and sunny. I ate dinner early and hurried over to Wilder, where the bus was waiting and already half-full. Greg, the president of OCircus!, was standing by the bus doors with a list of people's names (this later became dubbed "the clipboard of authority"). Noah, OCircus's secretary, was standing a few feet away with a box full of shirts from old Circus shows that he was handing out to everyone who wanted one. He gave me one from "before your time"--the spring show of his freshman year, "Will Work For Circus."

Eventually everyone was on the bus. Greg made a few announcements about procedures once we got to Cleveland, we gave a resounding cheer for the bus driver, and we got under way!

I looked around the bus, quite content. I knew practically all the forty-eight passengers, most of them by name, a few only by sight. There were lots of people from Sci-Fi Hall, which has a fair amount of overlap with OCircus!, and many people who I know mostly or only through their involvement with OCircus!, but the people on the bus weren't just circus performers. Many people are on the OCircus mailing list because they want to know when Circus-y events are coming up; many people have friends who are in the circus who told them about Cirque du Soleil. My roommate Emma, for instance, was with us.

A bunch of silly, happy, excited Obies on a bus makes for an entertaining experience. We rolled on toward Cleveland through hat-stealing, sunflower-seed-sharing, texting-Greg-from-seven-seats-away shenanigans.

We arrived at Cleveland, where Greg met up with a Cirque du Soleil organizer and got our tickets. The show was taking place in a large indoor stadium. We bustled through the doors and into the stadium itself, climbed up to our seats, and looked around in awe.

We were in a huge room that somehow seemed hushed, despite the number of people streaming in. Gem-like lamps suspended over the stage punctuated the velvety darkness with a soft golden glow that cast very little true illumination; the stage itself was still largely invisible. Connor, Emma, Noah, and I found seats near three recent Oberlin alumni. (Josh taught the poi ExCo I took last spring.) We chatted for a while, and then the show got underway.

While I will attempt to describe some of what happened, I strongly urge you to go to YouTube and look up "Cirque du Soleil Drailion" to get a better idea of what was going on. Needless to say, it was beautiful, and it was great to watch it with other Circus people. People in OCircus have some pretty impressive skills, and, even if you don't know anything about them technically, after a few shows or skillshare sessions you learn to recognize certain moves and techniques. Having attempted a few of them also gives you a feel for how difficult they are. Apparently, this means you're impressed by different things than everyone else. Our block of seats was definitely cheering at things the rest of the audience didn't.

I have the deepest respect for these performers and their dedication and skill is breathtaking. To have that much control over your body, to do these kinds of things, and make it look utterly effortless--it blows my mind. Not just mine, either; at one point, Connor leaned over to me and whispered, "I told you, didn't I? --You'd think you have to be dreaming." The entire show was wonderful, but a few acts stuck out to me.

The trampoline act. The back of the stage was a gently-curved wall, fifteen or twenty feet high. At some point, while the audience was engrossed with lizardlike acrobats, someone had set up trampolines along the bottom of it. When the spotlight shifted away from the lizard-people, there were people standing on tiny platforms along the wall. And then they fell.

And then they levitated.

Over and over, these people bounded from platform to platform, from side to side of the stage, frequently arriving at the very top of the wall. There they would pause, then fall down onto the trampoline, rise effortlessly most of the way up, and then run up the side of the wall to arrive back at the top. It looked the way swimming feels, sometimes, when bouyancy tricks you into thinking gravity is pointing a different way, but it was in the air--and it was exuberant, joyous, graceful.

The crossed wheel. I have seen videos before of someone performing with a giant hoop. This act has two hoops intersecting, sketching out a sphere. Apparently it was invented by the man who does this act, in which he weaves in and out of the wheel, lifts it, rolls on it, stands up through it as it rolls over him.

This performance defies verbs. Is he dancing with the wheel? Is he doing acrobatics on it? How can I describe this? That thought became a defining theme of the night.

Partner aerials. Again, I was baffled at how to describe this. It was a dance in flight, an exhibition of astonishing strength, a display of practice and confidence. It may have been this act that prompted Connor to say, when I was reduced to helplessly stammering, "H-how . . . ?", that "I think they send somebody over beforehand to beat up physics and tie it to a chair."

The clowns. I cannot say too much here for fear of spoiling things for any readers who might later go and see the show; the force of a joke is largely in surprise, after all. I will simply say that I take my cues from those who know more than I do, that OCircus! has some great clowns, and that they were very eager to learn from these at the meet-and-greet.

At the intermission, several people bought cotton candy--what's a circus without cotton candy?--and shared it liberally with the rest of us. Once I got over a fit of sitting thunderstruck by what I'd just seen, I ate my share of colorful sugar and chatted with people. Noah (who, in addition to being OCircus! secretary, is a lifelong stagehand) leaned over and asked, "What does it mean that the person who I most want to be right now is the guy I saw dragging the tumbling mats offstage?"

The end of the show was similar, at least in the people-sitting-speechless vein. As the rest of the audience began to leave, the person who'd given Greg our tickets came over to tell us to stay in our seats until everyone else was gone and then he'd lead us down to the stage for the meet-and- greet. He brought with him a large bag full of programs, t-shirts, and a few red clown noses. Apparently getting to meet the performers wasn't enough--we got swag, too! Nobody had been expecting this. Greg and Noah decided that the contents of the bag would be distributed as fairly as possible by raffle.

Once the rest of the audience was gone, we were led down several flights of stairs to the floor of the stadium itself. The stage rose a good five feet off the floor, and on the edge sat several of the performers: a dancer, two of the clowns, and one of the amazing trampoline artists. Accompanying them were a production manager and another organizer-type person whose exact job I unfortunately cannot recall.

There was an open Q & A session, in which we learned a lot about the process of becoming a Cirque performer and the fine art of moving the whole show from city to city. The stage, equipment, costumes, etc. all pack into a fleet of seventeen enormous trucks; they hire from seventy to two hundred people to help with the setup in each new location. The performers all have different stories. One of the clowns had only been in the show for a month or so, if I recall correctly, while another had been with it for years, and the trampoline artist had been on Spain's national acrobatics team for twenty years before joining Cirque du Soleil. All of them, whatever their backgrounds, have worked very hard. They were all so kind and told us so much about their lives and their training.

At the end of the Q & A, we broke into smaller groups, people moving and mingling to speak with whomever they wished. Noah made a beeline for the production manager; my friend Will got into an intense discussion with one of the clowns, which was adorable to watch, because they had the same intensity and enthusiasm and even some of the same mannerisms.

Before we left, Greg produced a bag from somewhere and gave all the people who had talked with us OCircus! t-shirts. They loved it, and when we took group pictures, some of them even posed wearing them.

And then we piled back onto the busses and returned to Oberlin, elated, inspired, and exhausted.

I have been accepted to both Duke and North Carolina State University's Master's degree programs for mechanical engineering. The waiting for decisions felt a lot like the two admissions rounds I had been through before, except grad schools tend to send emails rather than paper letters (not as much fun, and there is no time of day when the 'mail comes,' so I'm left checking my email every half hour to see if I got into grad school. Yuck). Even now, I'm waiting on financial aid packages from both schools to decide whether I can go to either, and checking my email inbox and not seeing anything has become a source of stress. When I applied for undergrad I had a better sense of the places that I really wanted to go to and those that I kind of wanted to go to. Visiting campuses helped an awful lot. There was a sense of a place you could get from a tour that never comes across in brochures or perhaps in admissions blogs. Three tours made invaluable contributions to my college search. One disqualified a college I had been seriously considering from the competition. The other two put the schools I visited at the top of my list.

The first school was a little liberal arts college that one of my favorite teachers in high school went to. He was the cool teacher, and I was confident that this would be the cool school. On paper this school was a midwestern liberal arts college, much like Oberlin. Except not like Oberlin. It was in the middle of a larger city, and it turns out a lot of students there are commuters. That was a bit of a turn-off. The brochures had touted the surrounding city as an opportunity to live in proximity to world-class museums and concert halls, but it seemed like it served to spread the students to the winds when weekends came. The community I felt in the Little Colleges on the Prairie seemed dilute there. The school also was big into sports, which made the place feel like the big state university in my home town. So it wasn't right for me, but it may be perfect for one of you.

The second college visit put a sunny, beautiful campus in the winning bracket for me. My family visited this college in February, which meant we drove through an ice storm in Missouri to barely make it to the airport alive, only to get off the airplane in sunny California to learn that there was a special on convertibles at the rental car place. We drove to another small liberal arts college in a red Mustang convertible with the top down. In February. The tour of the campus was impressive, the dining hall looked a little like Hogwarts, and the cross country coach was a really cool guy (touring also lets you talk with future coaches/teachers, which is really important if you're planning on spending 4 years with someone). Our tour guide tried to tell us how great the place was, but got out of breath more than once talking about how much he loved it. He was convincing. After the tour, another student took me and my family for lunch in the dining hall and told us about how much she loved the school. Of course, these were hired guns from the admissions department, aren't they supposed to be the most exuberant rah-rahs around? Maybe, but I believed both of them.

A third visit solidified a college's place in the top tier for me. I knew about the school's strong Neuroscience and Biology departments, some of my likely candidates for fields of study. The cross country coach had contacted me early in my senior year of high school asking me about classes, running, and family so I felt 'recruited.' I knew about the college's social consciousness and long history of activism (guessed it yet?). The visit was something else, though. The science center had lots and lots of lab space for learning hands-on. Tappan Square seemed like a cool space and a great idea, an automatic town-gown crossover place where the college could host community events. Our tour guide kept coming up with factoid after factoid about how Oberlin was the first institution to give degrees to black people and women, and hosted the reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as a commencement speaker in 1965. It was the last stop on the underground railroad before Canada, and was the site of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue of 1858. The AJLC Environmental Studies building was really fun to look around and hear about. I was impressed by the right kind of things. Nothing was really flashy or impressive in the way I had seen at other schools (although the turret and observatory in Peters are pretty sweet), but lots of things I saw and heard about just made sense. I also just liked Oberlin. Just liked it, I couldn't tell you why. Is this a reason, by itself, to go to a place? Well, why wouldn't you want to go to a place with an inexplicable magnetism? It certainly isn't a bad thing.

So, my advice to students who are visiting campuses: pay attention to how you are feeling as you tour them. The words in admissions literature are much less important than how much you like a place and the students there. If you visit a school where everyone tucks in their shirts to go to class and you're the kind of person who wears sweatpants to formal functions, perhaps it's not the place for you. Maybe you don't see anything that obvious, you just don't like the way the common spaces are super quiet or you love the way people push tables together to make massive pods of eaters in the dining halls. These are feelings you will be feeling again and again while you attend the school, so listen to them.

A couple weeks before the latest issue was supposed to go to print, I had a meeting with Adrian, a writer, and Francis, one of the editors-in-chief for the Synapse. I was taking over the editing duties for Adrian's article, which still needed some big structural changes after a few drafts. I was pretty sure I could help Adrian out with the changes he needed, but the challenge was breaking it to him that the draft he had, the fourth he had written, would have to undergo major reconstructions if it was going to be published.

We talked about the article generally for a while. Francis started asking Adrian questions, and I quickly saw why Francis had the job he did and why I probably couldn't do his job. Francis asked questions like "Why did you write this article?" and "What are you trying to say?" Important questions, but pretty pointed. One exchange made me say "ooof" under my breath:

Francis: "So, as your article is now, does it support your thesis well?"
Adrian: "Well, I think it does a pretty good--"
Francis: "No. It doesn't."

It was what Adrian needed to hear. He got serious about revising his article, went back to the outlining and planning stage to make the paragraphs he already had work much better together. His article is going to be a double feature in Issue 1 (the second issue) of the Synapse, and he should be proud of it. If it were just me and Adrian, we probably could have gotten there eventually, but with Francis's cut-to-the-heart style, we got halfway there by the end of that first meeting.

There have been times, single moments when I'm confronted by a person who shows me that I will never be able to do certain things. I don't consider myself a prude, in fact, if I were the type of person to talk about it, you would learn that I'm a bit of a sexual expert. But I don't talk about that stuff.

Last Spring Break, I went to Chicago (and wrote about it here and here) for an Improvisation Intensive for the ages. Obehave was killing time between improv shows our first night in Chi-Town, and after spending 45 minutes in our van watching people in Subway eat their sandwiches we decided to see the city a little. It was chilly and we wanted to spend as much time as we could indoors. We sprinted from the van to the first adult toy store we saw.

It panned out exactly as you would imagine. Obehave went straight for the more phallic toys and made them into fake noses, using funny voices to create both summits between UN representatives and high class British teas.

Here was my moment. As I was walking toward the front of the store, a few ladies behind the counter were passing around a tube of lube and dabbing on their fingers. As one of the women rubbed her fingers together, she uttered a phrase I knew I would never ever say:

"I like this one a lot. I think this is my new favorite silicone-based lube!"

Again, I'm not a total prude. I wasn't shocked or offended at all, just struck by the young woman's expertise and comfort in the world of intimate paraphernalia. As comfortable as I can be talking about sex, I knew that I would probably never be on the same level as this woman. I guess that's another career path closed off to me, another dream trodden underfoot.

And while it doesn't feel good, knowing you'll never be a sex worker (that's what you call them, right?) or a cutthroat editor for a magazine, it is a quick way to learn about yourself. As soon as the realization sets in, you start to ask why. Why do I have a hard time giving harsh criticisms? Because I hold my own writing dear, I don't like to be criticized, and I tend to take things personally when someone says something that I'm proud of could use some improvement (and I don't show other people things I'm working on until I'm proud of them. Two-in-one). How come I wouldn't be a good worker in the flesh trade? Maybe I'm just less receptive to props in what I believe should be a minimalist production (you are naked, for goodness sake). Perhaps my Midwestern upbringing or genealogy (I have both Mormons and Catholics as forebears) has rendered me more blush-prone than I would like to imagine. I think that's probably the case.

I asked to try the lube out myself, hoping to appear worldly and sexually in-the-know. I tried it and said confidently:
"As sili's go, it's not bad. Love Slide has a less chalky aftertaste." And left the store to audible gasps and swoons.

See that wooden thing in the back? You lie on it and it stretches you out - ouch! Unless you set it up wrong and then you just get a big old metal spring in your face. Basically, this whole room is OUCH.

It's so secretive - you have to get the key from the dance teacher and she leads you down all these corridors deep into the basement and there it is! Oberlin's answer to the room of requirement. Jane and Annie are in 'dance conditioning' class so we get in free and they get credit! How brill.

OK, so the trampoline is a little small for three. By the way, there is no doubt that Annie and Jane diligently stayed for three hours after I visited doing a mega intensive Everest-preparation-style workout, to earn their credit for class...

This was our post-midterm reward. I am so happy exams are over, for a few weeks at least! Well, I was so happy when I wrote that. Now break's over and I'm back, and so are the exams. Poo! They always make me worry way more than I should. I mean, really, you'll either know the answer or you won't, and at a certain point there's not much more you can do about it! But if there's one thing you can count on, it's your professor coming up with some unbelievably strange question. For example, the last question on my multivariable calculus exam was a fill-in-the-blank sentence, the answer being:

Oh, of course, renal calculus! What a wonderful image that is. Damn, I must have forgotten to read the whole of Wikipedia as part of my revision for this test. Face palm. (woo I said an American slang phrase thing!!)

Annie and Jane also go to ballet classes in town here twice a week, so if you're a prima ballerina prospie, no worries! You can ballet to your heart's content pretty much every day of the week. I also know a first-year who's joined a professional ballet company in Cleveland part-time, so the sky's the limit. And then, once you've danced the Nutcracker, maybe you'll finish up that biology project on a rare animal...

The long-anticipated Rare Animal Featurette continues!

Episode 2: Kakapwho? Kakapo!

Hello, my name is Sirocco! No really, I am actually called Sirocco. I'm a bit of a celebrity in these parts, being the only tame-ish kakapo in the world.

Kakapos are one of my favourite VIPs (Very Important Parrots) - tied with scarlet macaws, African greys and Sunshine - a parrot I made friends with when I was living in Bolivia last year:

Sorry, couldn't resist. I miss my Sunshine! The above parrot is not a kakapo - she's just cute. The above above parrot is a kakapo. Back on topic! The kakapo is flightless. There are no native predators in New Zealand, so really no need for wings. But when possums came over from Australia on the boats, kakapos had no idea what a predator even was, so as any good host would, they tried to walk up and say hi to their guests, with tragic consequences. Now there are only a hundred kakapos left in the world, and they all live on a tiny island at the bottom of South Island - it should be too far away for those sneaky possums to swim to, but some possums still make it over, so volunteers have to go around setting possum traps to protect the innocent, friendly kakapos. New Zealand is literally a possum-hating country. But it's not the possums' fault that they like eating kakapos, is it? Can't blame them for taking an easy meal. Tough moral problem here. I guess there is no shortage of possums. And we need a lot more kakapos in this world! But basically, as is true for the entire history of the world, the moral of the story is: humans screwed it all up.

Stephen Fry visited the kakapo island and made a documentary. This is him meeting Sirocco:

You'd have thought, if kakapos were that eager, there'd be more of them by now! Maybe the problem is in identifying what another kakapo actually is. Tiny evolutionary hiccup there. New life goal: meet a kakapo. But maybe not this particular bloke!

Rare animal Featurette 3 teaser: something very cute, medium sized, and very hairy - especially the nose. Guesses? So until next time, remember: never accept candy from possums.