Wellesley College 2007 (College Prowler)

According to The Simpsons, Wellesley students are rich girls with pearls. According to Saturday Night Live, we’re horny women who get our tongues stuck to ice sculptures of male genitalia. And The Family Guy cracks that we’re combat boot-wearing lesbians. Rolling Stone Magazine has called us all three—and in one article, no less.

This is the plight of the "Wellesley Woman."

Just how long of a plight it is depends on the individual student, however. During the first year, one soon realizes that Wellesley is not easy, nor is it the "traditional" college experience. It is rare to spend four years at Wellesley without thinking about transferring, but it is also rare to graduate without realizing you have become a stronger, smarter woman. Wellesley is a contradiction: a supposedly all-accepting society that excludes men, an empowering institution that sometimes infantilizes its students, and an intellectual environment that often prizes ambition above contemplation.

It is in accepting and understanding these contradictions that Wellesley students grow. It is easy to simplify Wellesley, to say it is all good or all bad, but of course, it is neither. Like at any college, sometimes life at Wellesley is awful, but other times, you really can’t imagine yourself anywhere else.

The students are nervous and nervy, anal-retentive and accepting. Sometimes you’ll want to scream and strangle your fellow students, and other times you’ll be proud to call them your sisters. I don’t like all my classmates, but I do respect them. They moan, they whine, they tend to be uptight, but I’ve found it easy to surround myself with women who inspire me daily—even if it is just by how much fried dough they can eat at Lake Day.

I came to Wellesley despite the fact that it is all women; I believed, and still believe, that I would have preferred to go to school with men as well. However, Wellesley is not for those who indulge in "what ifs"—it is for those that make the best of what they have, and come to realize that what they have to offer the world is the best.

Genevieve Brennan, Author
Wellesley College