What Barnard Gave Me
A few months ago, I received an email addressed to the Class of 2021, notifying us of an in-person makeup ceremony for my class and the graduating class before me. I couldn’t help but read the opening line of the email with a hint of irony: “We hope that you have found the months since you left Barnard’s campus to be fulfilling and engaging.” In some ways, it was almost like I never left: my Barnard Commencement was on April 29 and my first day of work as the Admissions Assistant for the Office of Admissions was just shy of 5 months later, on September 27.
A short glance of my Barnard Admissions website bio will show you that in the Office of Admissions, I have worn many hats since I first started working as a Barnard Student Admissions Representative (BSAR for short) during my second semester at Barnard. As a former Senior Interviewer, I’ve been asked many great questions about my Barnard experience: what was your favorite class? Why did you choose Barnard? What was your favorite memory as a student? Though I have great, if somewhat well-practiced answers for those questions, the one that I’m occasionally asked which always requires a moment of introspection is: what has Barnard given you?
For all the funny and sometimes surreal experiences that have come out of working for my alma mater, the one I linger on and am so grateful for is being able to see how far I’ve come since first stepping through the gates as a first-year student. To paint a picture, Cassandra in 2017 was painfully shy, more than a little lacking in confidence, and, for all her interest in writing (her high school yearbook superlative was “Most Likely to Write a Bestselling Novel”), unable to express her thoughts about her identity–or more accurately, identities. In case the use of third person didn’t make this point clear, I feel like a completely different person five years later. Sure, I’m still a little shy (outside of my job, which requires talking to strangers all day) and I have some more confidence (baby steps!), but talking about my identity and my experiences? Like my English professor, journalist extraordinaire Maria Hinojosa (and now fellow Barnard alumna) once said, “That’s my superpower.”
This may come as no surprise, as Barnard is a historically women’s college, but gender is a common, if not constant, presence on campus. No, not all students on our campus or in our community are women. Yes, going to a historically women’s college will prepare you for the real world, because it will make you ask the question: “What am I bringing to the table and to the conversation from my experiences as [fill in your identity here]?”
For me, the question is: “What am I bringing to this conversation as a Jewish Latina woman?” For so long, I was used to seeing those identities–Jewish, Latina, woman, separately and especially put all together–as something which separated me from others and something that was painful. Coming to Barnard, I discovered–as Maria Hinojosa said–that those identities are really my superpower. Getting to learn how to use that superpower, and not only celebrate but truly own my different identities, alongside my peers at Barnard is an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I’ve noticed, in my experience as a tour guide and an interviewer (and my curious perusal through the internet), that there’s a tendency to think of students at a women’s college as being the same, or similar in some important way. However, as I think back on the courses I took, the friends I made, the classmates I admired from afar, I think about how different we all were. The classmates who graduated alongside me were playwrights, activists, scientists, and explorers, all with their own stories to tell. I feel honored and so incredibly lucky to have been alongside them, however brief that time was, as we learned to use those superpowers–to reflect on our own identities and own them–together.