There’s a lot to do on campus and sometimes choices must be made. French recitation or hearing Madeleine Albright speak? A leisurely dinner with friends, or grab takeout and head straight to the Jamaica Kincaid reading? Calculus office hours or an address from Bill Clinton? Spending an extra two hours on my geology paper, or attend a lecture by Judith Butler? Rugby practice or Jhumpa Lahiri? You get the idea… I blame Bryn Mawr for hosting too many wonderful events.
Once in a while, the best thing you can do for your Bryn Mawr education is skip class. Yes, I am here to go to classes and to receive a wonderful liberal arts education, but in my mind that includes taking advantage of all the opportunities Bryn Mawr presents us with. Classes are a great opportunity for learning, but there comes a point when the chance to learn something a little different is just something that shouldn’t be passed up. I fully support skipping out on the occasional classroom lecture or other obligations in pursuit of another type of learning.
Yesterday was one of those chances. I skipped my class to attend a Pen-y-Groes seminar. A freshman I met through the rugby team actually recommended that I go to one of these seminars—she was so excited about her experience that I figured I’d have to go before I graduate.
The Pen-y-Groes seminars are something relatively new that President McAuliffe started shortly after she began at Bryn Mawr. She invites a small group of students into her home for a lunchtime conversation with a “guest of honor”—someone selected for their accomplishments in their field. Often they are Bryn Mawr alums.
I signed up to have lunch with actress Maggie Siff, who graduated in 1996. You may know her as Rachel Menken in AMC’s TV show Mad Men. The twelve students who were in attendance were served a beautiful lunch and then settled into a conversation with Maggie. She spoke about her time at Bryn Mawr (she was a Pem East frosh, a customs person, and a tour guide!) and how her career ended up taking the trajectory it did. She told us about being a woman in her profession and how female producers and writers are a much-needed commodity in her field. We also discussed what it means to have a career in the arts—a tricky pursuit, because so many people feel the need to create art and would love to do that for a living, and yet it is notorious for being a field that doesn’t always pay well.
Bryn Mawr’s events aren’t limited to big-name celebrities like Jamaica Kincaid and Maggie Siff, though—there is a whole host of other informative lectures and talks worth going to. Fiction writer Karen Russell is giving a reading tomorrow. There’s also a lunchtime discussion of plagiarism and citation in the digital age happening in Canaday, one of our libraries. Later this week there’s a panel of our own geo professors willing to speak with students about graduate school. The department was also invited to a talk on the water quality of the Delaware Estuary at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly. Next week Peter Dodson, a well-known paleontologist, is coming to speak to my invertebrate paleobiology class.
Needless to say, I’m not going to skip out on all of my obligations to attend these things on campus, but I’ll definitely pick and choose and take advantage of these awesome opportunities.
