Wellesley what should we call me

But I turned out to be wrong, because years later I met another Wellesley graduate who had been as hell-bent on domesticity as I had been on a career. And she had gone to the same dean with the same problem, and the dean had said to her, "Don't have children right away. Take a year to work. To be instead, that thing in the middle. A lady. We were to take the fabulous education we had received here and use it to preside at dinner table or at a committee meeting, and when two people disagreed we would be intelligent enough to step in and point out the remarkable similarities between their two opposing positions.

We were to spend our lives making nice. Many of my classmates did exactly what they were supposed to when they graduated from Wellesley, and some of them, by the way, lived happily ever after. But many of them didn't. All sorts of things happened that no one expected. They needed money so they had to work. They got divorced so they had to work.

They were bored witless so they had to work. The women's movement came along and made harsh value judgments about their lives—judgments that caught them by surprise, because they were doing what they were supposed to be doing, weren't they? The rules had changed, they were caught in some kind of strange time warp. They had never intended to be the heroines of their own lives, they'd intended to be—what? They ended up feeling like victims. They ended up, and this is really sad, thinking that their years in college were the best years of their lives.

Why am I telling you this? It was a long time ago, right? Things have changed, haven't they? Yes, they have. But I mention it because I want to remind you of the undertow, of the specific gravity.

American society has a remarkable ability to resist change, or to take whatever change has taken place and attempt to make it go away. Things are different for you than they were for us. Just the fact that you chose to come to a single-sex college makes you smarter than we were—we came because it's what you did in those days—and the college you are graduating from is a very different place.

All sorts of things caused Wellesley to change, but it did change, and today it's a place that understands its obligations to women in today's world.

The women's movement has made a huge difference, too, particularly for young women like you. There are women doctors and women lawyers. There are anchorwomen, although most of them are blonde. But at the same time, the pay differential between men and women has barely changed. In my business, the movie business, there are many more women directors, but it's just as hard to make a movie about women as it ever was, and look at the parts the Oscar-nominated actresses played this year: hooker, hooker, hooker, hooker, and nun.

It's , and you are graduating from Wellesley in the Year of the Wonderbra. The Wonderbra is not a step forward for women.

Nothing that hurts that much is a step forward for women. What I'm saying is, don't delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the earth. Don't let the New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you—there's still a glass ceiling. Don't let the number of women in the work force trick you—there are still lots of magazines devoted almost exclusively to making perfect casseroles and turning various things into tents.

Don't underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally.

Understand: Every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you. Underneath almost all those attacks are the words: Get back, get back to where you once belonged. When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn't serious about her career, that is an attack on you.

The acquittal of O. Simpson is an attack on you. Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you—whether or not you believe in abortion. The lack of men really, really scared me. My parents were also concerned about the cost. Then I got an email from Vassar. I was accepted off the waitlist!

It seemed similar to Wellesley, except co-ed. But when I thought about it, Wellesley had more pros than cons for my particular major and career. I had applied early action to Yale, and when the decision arrived, I gathered my five best friends in the library and we sat at a round table holding hands.

I was too scared to check the result, so I asked a teenager on one of the computers to read the decision. My friends were supportive, but I felt embarrassed that I dragged them all out and that I had spent so much effort on the application. My best moment was at my honors program graduation. The students had to say where they were going to college, and when I said Wellesley the whole room gasped. I felt so much pride, especially when juniors came up to me afterwards to ask how I got in.

You have to put your authentic self into the process of applying to college. My voice and enthusiasm were my strongest qualifications. So I made sure both were present in my essay, By being authentic, I found a college that is excited about what I can uniquely add to its community.

My parents will cover the rest. My counselor was right--no one is a shoo-in for highly selective colleges. But although you might not get into your first or second choices, schools that show their enthusiasm for your application -- and real interest in you -- can be a better fit. No, I'm not Hogwarts. Why does everyone keep asking that? Wellesley, MA, is a fairly quiet commuter town about forty minutes to an hour outside of Boston, depending on whether you take an Uber, the commuter rail, or the college-run shuttle bus.

The town center boasts a few coffee shops, two pizza places one gourmet, one old-school , and a disconcerting number of barber shops and beauty salons. I may be small, but I'm never afraid to speak up—which is handy, because with just 2, undergraduates, even intro classes feel like seminars.

Professors really do want you to come to office hours, and, at some point, you'll find yourself humming along to your Astro professor's musical explanation of the solar system or blundering your way through a Siberian folk song with the Russian Area Studies faculty.

I like how close-knit my community can be at this size. Not gonna lie: I may not be Hogwarts, but I sure look like it. No, really. I've got secret passageways, tropical greenhouses, and my own lake—though I'm pretty sure there's no giant squid living in it. Not positive. But pretty sure. Students are guaranteed college housing all four years, and though some people rent apartments in the Ville or even Cambridge, most choose to stay on campus. The housing lottery usually awards singles to seniors and juniors, while first years and sophomores share with a roommate or two.

The neo-Gothic buildings on West Campus may be more sought-after than the s-mod dorms of East Campus, but East Siders know that showers with quality water pressure are not to be sneezed at. I've also got plenty of alternative housing.

Other alternative living spaces on campus include SCOOP, a sustainable living cooperative where students cook their own meals, and the feminist co-op Instead.