October 2, 2015 - 15:49
“Dear guests it says under the name “Olive,” I will be your maid for the day. Please rate me: Excellent. Good. Average. Poor. Thank you." I tuck this memento from the Sheraton British Colonial into my notebook. How would "Olive" rate me? What would it mean for us to seem "good" to each other? What would that rating require?”
The air was still cool and the flowers had just begun blooming on the trees, the wind sang sweet songs of hopefulness, of future Step Sings, of great food, and of new friends. I remember looking out the windows and talking to my mom about living off campus one day, as we passed a quaint gray cobbled apartment complex just outside of Ardmore. It only took me a few seconds to search for the complex online and realize that I wasn’t going to live off campus. Ever.
Before I came to Bryn Mawr I had many worries. I kept asking myself, “Will I make any friends?” “Will I like my classes?” “Will I miss home?” But my biggest question of all was and still is, “How will I deal with the stark difference in socioeconomic background between me and most of the other students. I have lived a good life, I have a mixed family with five siblings who I’m close too, both from my mom and my stepdad always take care of me, and make sure me and my siblings are all safe and happy despite how little money they had. When I found out I was accepted into Bryn Mawr, they both began saving up money for me to visit in April with my mom, and to send me off to the whirlwind that is college.
Money isn’t the only thing that worried me about coming to Bryn Mawr: My high school wasn’t really “preparing me for the college or career of my choice” as it so proudly proclaimed. Before beginning high school at Sharpstown, I heard terrible stories of what Sharpstown was like Fortunately, with the revamping of our school under the new Apollo 20 reform, the stories seemed to fade into the background and Sharpstown became just like any other school,except for the fact that we had longer school days, and more math and reading classes, but I was content with these small changes. Until I found out what Apollo 20 really meant. It’s just a fancier way of saying that Sharpstown is one of the worst schools in Houston. In fact, Sharpstown was so substandard that PBS produced a documentary during my freshman year in 2012 about the shortcomings of Sharpstown and titled it appropriately so – “Dropout Nation.” Our school, they claimed, was manufacturing dropouts and failures. This documentary felt like the media was tucking us, sharps town and our experiences and background, away like a memento. They came into our school to further themselves in a very selfish way, only scratching the surface of a student at Sharpstown High School. Documenting the struggles of Sharpstown and not actually doing anything about it. It is hard to believe the media when they have the power of portrayal. Their intention may have been good but the impact was that of carelessness.
Bryn Mawr is a complete 360 degree turn from my High School. It is polished, clean, and $60,000 annually, something I couldn’t dream of affording without financial aid. When I arrived I began noticing the details of this reality quickly. It was the little things like, the shoes some students wore, or their embroidered backpacks. I remember overhearing a conversation between two girls who both enthused about going to the thrift store because it was edgy. I go to the thrift store because it’s what I can afford. These stark differences in socioeconomic class had become a reality to me. I was noticing privilege like someone notices a bull in a marketplace. It felt messy, and out of place to me. I felt like I was looking at them as they are tourists, outsiders in my world because of how they interacted with it.
I chose this short passage from June Jordan’s, Report from the Bahamas because it resonated with me in a way that I don’t think some people can truly grasp. This passage is really about a tourist’s journey thorough a world they only halfway understand. In some ways I feel like I am a tourist, traveling through this weird community that is Bryn Mawr, and in other ways I feel like Olive and the others because the “Tourists,” are all eating too much and enjoying things in so many ways that are foreign to me. These sort of contact zones between other students here at Bryn Mawr have made me think more about who I am as a person, and who I am in relation to Bryn Mawr.
Bryn Mawr has been a hard place to navigate. I have never felt so out of place in my own home. I am surrounded by so many intelligent students that interpret the world so differently than I do that I feel like I am drowning in culture shock. I have plenty in common with students here, but no matter how similar we are, we’re still very different and may not always be able to connect. I feel like Olive felt this too, with all the people coming to the Bahamas and misinterpreting her intentions and background even if she looked the same as they did. I’m not sure how any student at Bryn Mawr would rate me, or any professor or faculty member would rate me for that matter. We all come from very different backgrounds, and we all have very complex stories that are central to us as a person. I hope that one day soon I can figure out what it will take for someone to rate me as “good,” and what it will take for me to rate them as “good.” I wonder what this rating will require for each of us. Until that day at least I know where I stand in relation to everyone here at Bryn Mawr. In the same room.
Pratt, Mary Louise. "Arts of the Contact Zone." Profession (1991): 33-40.
Jordan, June. “Report from the Bahamas, 1982." Meridians 3, 2 (2003): 6-16.