Friday reflection
The time I left college
Hi everyone,
The theme of personal agency has been coursing through my conversations with women leaders the past couple of weeks. It’s a theme that’s central to Mighty Forces, because before you can believe that your story matters, you have to believe that you matter. And you have to believe that the choices you make have power — that raising your voice, for example, changes the shape of the world. As I like to say, the world isn’t just happening to us; we are happening to the world.
As I work on my Mighty Forces book, I’ve been reflecting a lot on where my own sense of agency comes from, and have found myself writing this past week about the time I took a leave of absence from the University of Pennsylvania.
Here is that story.
It was October, and I was walking down Walnut Street in Philadelphia, crying. It was loud and commercial — I think I passed a Gap, and a Dunkin’ Donuts (or maybe it was a Cinnabon). I was carrying a heavy brown leather backpack; the leather felt smooth under my hand, on my shoulder. And tears were just spilling out of my eyes.
Back in my apartment, I called my friend Kate, and she said, “You need to get on a train and go home.” And she was right. So I did. A week later, I drove back up from Maryland with my then boyfriend, now husband, Jordan, and we packed up my things, and I officially took a leave of absence.
So, why was I crying? As a deep-thinking, deep-feeling 20-year-old, I was plagued by this huge disconnect between what felt true to me and what everyone around me was telling me was true — between image and reality. Everyone around me said being at Penn was about getting an education, but it overpoweringly felt instead like it was about getting the golden keys to an elite club, one where you could make gobs and gobs of money. I couldn’t shake the feeling like everyone was playing a part but I had never willingly auditioned for the play.
That summer, I’d read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, in which he observes that removing grades exposes a huge vacuum in our education system. This hit me on a deep level. I became aware of myself as a hamster on a treadmill, seeking little nuggets of praise in the form of gold stars, and I wanted off.
I think of this period now as part existential crisis appropriate for a thoughtful college student, and part clinical depression (though I wouldn’t be diagnosed for almost another decade). Also, Jordan and I were dating long distance, and I missed him like hell. When you find your soul mate and then you’re away from them more often than not, it hurts your heart. But most of all, my decision to leave Penn represents for me the beginning of my unwillingness to do things without knowing and believing the real reason for them, which is to say, the beginning of my commitment to leading an intentional life.
During my leave of absence, I thought of transferring to a different school. I had always felt like a fish out of water at Penn, where three quarters of the undergraduate student body were on explicitly pre-professional tracks (in the schools of business, engineering, and nursing), which made me feel irresponsible for being a liberal arts student to the tune of $30,000 a year. My parents never complained about the cost. After starting their adult lives with only a mattress to their names, they had worked their way up to the upper middle class and were paying my tuition out of pocket. No, my guilt was mine to own. It just felt outrageous to pay that much to “learn.” Couldn’t I learn by reading books? And then, as I did learn — about the culture of poverty, the AIDS epidemic, and other suffering that put my privilege in stark relief — I saw hordes of girls parading past me in matching black pants talking about where to get drunk that night, and it just felt disgusting.
I can’t remember if I thought of transferring to the University of Maryland, where Jordan went — the idea of being close to him would have been incredibly appealing, and yet, I don’t think I sensed I’d find my people there any more easily. And I didn’t want to just parachute into his life there.
I visited Kate at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, which seemed like a creative utopia — one where most people used drugs. As someone who had maybe tried pot once at that point, I was worried about feeling unsafe and like a big dork, one who was constantly self-conscious about being afraid of doing things other people considered fun. I ultimately decided I’d rather be the more liberal or creative person in a sea of more conservative people than the most conservative one in a sea of liberal boundary-pushers.
A conversation with an advisor at Penn swayed me back to its familiar, if not comforting, arms. She looked at my transcript and said, “Wait, why aren’t you an English major? All of your electives have been upper-level English seminars.” I explained that majoring in English seemed indulgent, because there was no clear career path; this is why I was a Communications major instead. (Honestly, I shake my head at the boxes I put myself in.) She said, “Fine, but for better or worse, all the creative kids at Penn are English majors, and you’d fit in there, and you should just do it.” So I did.
Back at Penn, I was different. I allowed myself to begin taking fiction-writing classes, the first creative writing classes of my college career. In a class about old British literature, when my professor tasked us with writing an essay about the English Mystery Plays, I asked if I could write plays instead, and she agreed. I wrote modern-day retellings of the stories of Mary’s immaculate conception (in my version, Mary was angry at God because he’d made her a mother without her consent, and Joseph slut-shamed her) and Noah’s ark (Noah saw the flood coming and built an ark in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, but in the eyes of his down-to-earth wife, he was always doing some crazy thing, so she didn’t take him seriously, and drowned).
I began an independent study, one rooted in John Dewey’s methodology of problem solving based on questions. I distilled the core question I wanted to answer into something about what it would take to help more Penn students have a meaningful college experience. It would be years before I’d hear the writer and activist V (formerly known as Eve Ensler) say, “We give what we most want to get, and we teach what we most want to learn.” I wanted to give other Penn students the gift I most desperately wished someone had given me.
Do you see the shift happening here, from accepting the world’s opening offer — ”This is what college is like” — to negotiating something better: “What if college were this way, instead?”? It was as if by taking a leave of absence, I had embraced my role as writer of my own life, and now I couldn’t stop writing, both literally and figuratively.
I had embraced my role as writer of my own life, and now I couldn’t stop writing, both literally and figuratively.
Months of research, including interviews with faculty and administrators, culminated in me recommending a new, mandatory class for incoming students, one that prompted them to get clear on what they wanted to get out of their college experience, and then to create a plan for how to get it.
One day, late in my senior year, the head of the English department asked to meet with me. In her office she told me that I was among a small group of students in my class being inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society. She said I was eligible because of my grades, but that what really impressed the committee was my independent and creative, engaged approach to learning, and she referenced my independent study, specifically. I was so proud and happy. I was used to being praised for my grades, but that praise felt empty; I had been trained to be a good student, and I behaved accordingly, but my grades weren’t a reflection of who I was in any deeper way. But being recognized for my creative initiative and independent thought — for expressing myself — now, that felt good.
Being recognized for my creative initiative and independent thought — for expressing myself — now, that felt good.
I graduated from Penn Phi Beta Kappa, with an English major, and a concentration in fiction writing. I was ready to write my future, not have it written for me.
In the movie “When Harry Met Sally,” Harry says, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start immediately.” I think the same is true when you recognize your true self. You fall in love. And you want that love to steer the course of your life immediately, and forever.
So that’s how I first found my agency (aka “How Amanda Got Her Groove (Not Back But For The First Time)”). I can’t help but notice the strong role that intuition plays in this story. Intuition is on my mind big-time these days thanks to the book I just inhaled, Listening in the Dark: Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition, edited by Amber Tamblyn. If the topic interests you at all, I heartily recommend getting yourself a copy post-haste. So, how does intuition figure into my story? Yes, my friend Kate told me to get on the train home, but / and, I immediately knew she was right, and I did it. Same when that advisor told me, “Just be an English major.” Somehow, I knew she was right. Sometimes intuition means knowing which advice to take. The advice, “Just suck it up,” for example, would not have resonated. I had tried that approach and it was, pretty clearly, not working. (See: tears streaming down face.)
Intuition, I realize, fuels agency. And self-esteem fuels them both…we have to find ourselves trustworthy in order to trust what our intuition tells us, and in order to trust that the action we take as a result of that intuition matters. If you’re as interested in geeking out on these topics as I am, I can recommend another book, one I’m currently reading: Gloria Steinem’s Revolution From Within: The Book of Self-Esteem.
What does my story bring up for you? What does it make you think about, or wonder? Here are some specific prompts for reflection:
When is a time time when you trusted your intuition?
When you think of having agency, what comes up for you?
What is a time when you rewrote your life — when you were on a path, and you intentionally went in a different direction?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
You are a mighty force -
Amanda
“We are so many selves. It’s not just the long-ago child within us who needs tenderness and inclusion, but the person we were last year, wanted to be yesterday, tried to become in one job or in one winter, in one love affair or in one house where even now, we can close our eyes and smell the rooms. What brings together these ever-shifting selves of infinite reactions and returnings is this: There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.”
- Gloria Steinem