No matter how much stress I’m under, I’m happy to be at Yale. Unlike many of my peers, I never dreamed about going to an Ivy League school. And unlike Suzy Lee Weiss (the bitter white girl who didn’t get into the college of her dreams and blamed everyone and anything), I am quite a diverse person. Without giving my entire life-story, I will say this: half-Chinese and half-Guinean, I was born in Beijing and lived in three continents before moving to America, where I handily obtained my citizenship the fall of my senior year in high school, right before college applications.
I promised myself I would try to restrain my aggression, but I have to say this one thing: STFU, SLW, you don’t know squat about squat. You’re not funny either. You try to simplify college admissions to a checklist of race, sexuality, immigrant status, public high schools. Had you been Shawn instead of Suzy, I’m sure you would have thrown gender into the mix.
In the words of a friend, there’s been so much institutional racism — and there still is — that there needs to be some sort of resolution. Even now, affirmative action doesn’t do nearly as much as everyone, Suzy Lee included, seems to think. Affirmative action only forces colleges to look at applicants they wouldn’t normally look at; it doesn’t guarantee admission. Does she know the struggles of marginalized peoples at all? If she did, she wouldn’t wish for our burdens unless she knew about the heavy weight of that load.
As a minority, I have to work twice as hard for half as much recognition as a white person. As a woman, I have to work twice as hard for half as much recognition as a man. I stopped taking math after multivariable calculus, but those are some skewed ratios. So stop complaining, SLW. You just weren’t good enough.
Ever since I stepped through the door, a heavy suitcase in each hand, I’ve had the feeling that this house is no longer my home. Sitting on the rug, I look around my room, taking in the pale lavender walls, the tall bookshelf crammed tight with novels, the bed with its handmade quilt. It is only just evening, and yet the house is already beginning to quiet down, preparing for night. I can hear a rhythmic swish-clank coming from the kitchen, as my mother dries dishes and puts them away, the soft hiss of my brother’s shower upstairs, and my father’s intermittent throat-clearing and chair-scraping as he works late in his basement office.
Everything about this environment is so familiar, so normal — it is what I had experienced nearly every night for the first 18 years of my life. I can recreate every detail perfectly from memory, and indeed I had done so many times over the past six months, as I struggled with homesickness during my first year of college. I had never been away from home for such a long time before, and so as a break approached, I could hardly wait to return to the place that I knew so well. The little Tudor house at 5936 N. Berkeley Blvd., Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. Home. Home was safe, comforting, familiar. Even if I wasn’t sure if I belonged at college, I knew I would always belong at home.
But now I am home. And I don’t feel like I belong. Somehow, it is no longer mine. Something has changed. My room itself is no different — all of my possessions are exactly as I had left them, though perhaps a bit dustier — but something has changed.
I cannot stop the phrase from repeating in my mind. This is no longer my home.
* * *
As the days pass, the feeling becomes even more pronounced. I cannot adapt to the peaceful rhythm that had for so long been my daily routine. In the afternoons, I wander aimlessly through the house, picking up books and putting them down, unable to settle. I am now surprised to find my family in bed by 10 o’clock, while I am wide-awake for hours more, sitting alone in the darkness and silence. We are not even in the same time zone.
Somehow, I don’t fit here anymore. Something about college, about living away for the first time in my life, has changed me. This is no longer my home. But then where do I belong? Where is my home now?
The ache at the pit of my stomach grows, spreading through my body, clogging my throat. I spend the days on the couch, huddled in a blanket, overwhelmed by a feeling that I cannot entirely comprehend.
“Emma?”
My mother sits down next to me. I can see the concern in her eyes. She doesn’t say anything about how I’ve been acting, doesn’t try to make me explain the feelings that even I don’t understand.
“Let’s bake some scones.”
* * *
One of my most vivid memories from my childhood is the aroma of freshly baked scones. Whenever it was a special day — a holiday, a birthday, the first day of school — I could always count on waking up to find a plate of scones cooling on the kitchen counter. At Christmastime, Mom would make batches upon batches to give to our friends and neighbors; we would go through flour by the pound. My younger brother always joked that she should start a bakery: “Fallone’s Scones.” The baking process had entranced me when I was young, and as soon as I was able to hold a spoon I began to help, learning the old family recipes from my mother, just as my grandmother had taught her.
Yet that was a part of my other life, my childhood, when this house was still my home. I hesitate. Things are different now. I am not the same girl that had rejoiced in the act of carefully measuring cups of flour years ago.
Still, something compels me to stand and follow my mother to the kitchen. We work in silence, measuring out the ingredients. First, three cups of flour. I scoop it into the cup, brushing off the excess with the flat edge of a knife. Then the egg — two strong taps, followed by a satisfying crack. I coax out the yolk, throw away the shells, wash the slimy residue from my hands. My body moves almost of its own accord, easily falling back into the familiar rhythm. One-half cup of sugar, five teaspoons of baking powder, a bit of salt. I notice that our family recipe book is still sitting on the shelf, untouched. There is no reason for us to consult it. We know the steps by heart; they have not changed.
* * *
Later, we open the oven and carefully bring out the tray. We move the still-hot scones one by one in a basket to cool, admiring their perfect triangular shape. I smile as the kitchen is filled with a warm yeasty aroma. “I have always loved making scones with you,” I say, breaking our silence.
“I know,” my mother replies gently. “And you still can. I’ll always be here; we can make them every time you come back to this home.”
Come back to this home. The phrasing seems awkward.
My mother continues, “And then, someday many years from now, you’ll be baking them with your daughter, in your own home.”
In your own home.
And then I understand. “Home” is not singular, monolithic, unchanging. It is plural. There can be many homes, many places to belong. The addition of a new one does not detract from those in the past. It is so very simple, and yet overwhelming, a shift in perspective almost visceral in its impact. Suddenly I feel older, as if I have gained years’ worth of maturity in one small moment. It is a good feeling.
I stand in my home — my first home, that is, the first of many to come — feeling the warmth of the scones in my hands.
From her perch in the Calhoun dining hall, card-swiper Jessika Booker plays mother hen to Yale students not much younger than she is. She teases one boy about his mustache; she recommends hot chocolate to the flock coming in from the cold. And underneath her seat, she stores a shelled, white thing — this mother hen’s equivalent to a nested egg.
It’s a textbook.
“I’m a full-time mom, full-time employee, full-time student,” Jessika chirped. At 23, this Gateway Community College student pays her own way through school. She whips out her schoolwork during pauses — burps — in the hubbub of the dining hall where she happens to be employed.
Or if you want to look at it another way: She’s a Yale employee who happens to go to Gateway.
Student or worker, which is she? A pedantic question, perhaps. But to Yale employees officially classed in the Clerical & Technical, Service & Maintenance and Managerial & Professional divisions and weighing enrollment at a local or online college, the answer can seem obvious: Your job comes first. This is especially true because the only way many can pay for school is by taking advantage of Yale’s tuition reimbursements program, an opportunity available to workers as long as they remain on Yale’s payroll for the duration of their course of study.
And things get complicated. Full-time employees who have been here for five or more years pocket a 100 percent reimbursement (not to exceed $4,600 a year). Meanwhile, full-time employees with less than five years’ service claim 75 percent reimbursement (and up to $2,300 a year).
The provisos, unwinding, could dizzy you. Yale’s Human Resources Office writes on its website that all employees seeking tuition reimbursements must receive a passing grade of C- or better to claim the promised benefit. But, back in Calhoun, Booker was under the impression that she needed at least a B average.
Other dining hall staffers tried to disabuse me of the notion that Yale would pay for them to study whatever the hell they want — now, why would Yale do that, they asked, assuming limits on the degree programs they could pursue.
They were wrong, but not entirely: Yale does not dictate what employees should study, but does offer a separate subsidy for professional development (a consequence of local union bargaining). For workers weighing education costs, the two programs are easy to confuse.
Rather than getting caught up in the obscure nuances of benefits, many employees seem largely nonchalant about them. At most, they are slightly peeved at what they perceive as irrelevant minutiae — if they’re even aware of all the differences in benefits, which none of the 10 interviewed for this piece were.
K.C Mills, the operations manager at Silliman College, is cheerfully, if sporadically, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of New Haven. Mills, who earlier in her life completed some course work at another UNH (the University of New Hampshire), showed me her online reimbursement portal and explained that she plugs in her information, and that’s that. There’s no point in haggling with a computer, and for Mills, who has had her entire tuition covered by Yale, no need. She’s content.
Calm like Mills’ is the norm, but that’s until employees’ plans hit a roadblock. Imagine the dilemma: They’ve used up their reimbursement funds. They’re not exactly full-time, and don’t qualify for sufficient reimbursement. They don’t know reimbursement will cover a degree in art history.
That’s where the Yale Women’s Organization (YUWO) scholarships might come in handy.
For a woman.
* * *
While students are scrambling for grants and fellowships, it’s also application season for some female staff on campus. If Yale won’t fully reimburse their course tuition, the little-known but well-funded YUWO might, provided they apply by March 1. Decisions are reported by April 30.
When Working Mother magazine cited Yale as one of the 100 best (read: working mother-friendly) companies in the nation, it specifically mentioned the YUWO scholarships, along with the University’s tuition reimbursement program. But while a national magazine caught wind of the opportunity, many of its potential beneficiaries have not.
At five residential college dining halls, female pantry workers interviewed said they had never heard of the YUWO scholarships. One refused to volunteer her name, lest we report her to her manager for even considering the option. Some thought we were hawking wares. “Tell me more about this scholarship?” they said, leaning in.
Felicia Tencza, the current scholarships coordinator for YUWO, says the organization sends flyers to supervisors and department managers, and that information about the scholarships appears in the newsletter “Working at Yale.”
And Trudy Bollier, a YUWO member and scholarships coordinator for 2010–’11, says some candidates to the scholarship have applied at their supervisor’s urging.
But based on those dining hall conversations, one can suspect that certain supervisors — maybe a sampling error’s amount — are loath to accommodate an employee prioritizing education over work.
When asked whether she would now consider applying for the scholarships after having been informed about it, one dining hall worker, the same one who withheld her name, laughed us off.
“I don’t have time anyway, because my schedule’s all messed up.”
One might think the Yale University Women’s Organization is out of touch with the lives of the women it’s trying to help.
But its scholarships were conceived out of empathy, not sympathy. Kay Ross, the founder of the scholarships, whose husband, Bollier says, was an administrator in the sciences, had her own college studies interrupted before her marriage. In 1972, she awarded a first scholarship of $100.
Since then, the YUWO — now a club of local female Yale affiliates — has been awarding scholarships to women employees or the wives of Yale employees wishing to start or resume an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, or to pursue a degree from another certificate-granting program (say, for teaching). It’s sincerely looking to help women who had their studies interrupted before they completed their higher education.
Yes, their name might make one think of a prissy, white-gloved society luncheon — this is Yale, after all. And, as if on cue, Bollier told me that the group’s three highlights — in addition to the interest groups, like book, bridge and music clubs, advertised in their brochure — are a wine-and-cheese event, a holiday party and a May luncheon.
But the holiday party serves a noble purpose: fundraising for the scholarships. The guests of honor at that May luncheon are scholarship recipients.
They’re not the patronizing old birds we’d like to imagine, instead the YUWO’s leaders prove to be a classy bunch sans snobbery.
* * *
YUWO wants to help — but it can only do so much.
Nowadays, depending on the generosity of donors, YUWO awards around seven annual scholarships — one of them in honor of Kay Ross — that each provide between $1,000 and $3,000. According to its website, the organization has awarded 310 scholarships, totaling some $316,675.
Money for the scholarships comes entirely from donations, mostly from the over 300 members of the Women’s Organization and their friends, Bollier says. Those donations are made on top of membership fees.
So, given the state of the economy, the organization’s resource pool has predictably shrunk. In lockstep, the number of awards has steadily declined in the past few years. In 2008, 12 scholarships were granted. In 2009, nine. In 2010 and 2011, seven.
Last year, only five scholarships were awarded.
“What we’ve tried to do is move to larger awards as opposed to something under $1,000, because it’s a little more meaningful,” current coordinator Tencza says. But she emphasizes that the number and size of the scholarships depend on “who applies and what their financial need is.”
In a follow-up email, Tencza wrote that, in order to reduce the number of inquiries from ineligible candidates, YUWO “strives to sharpen our narrative description of eligibility.”
“It seems to be working. … Inquiries are reduced, not eliminated,” she wrote.
The application process for the scholarship is not especially arduous. Aside from basic (mostly financial) information, it asks for a one-page statement of purpose and two letters of recommendation. It is hard to imagine that many degree-seeking Yale employees don’t qualify.
Of course, first they need to be aware of its existence.
Michelle Gary, the card-swiper at Branford dining hall, was the last potentially eligible Yale employee interviewed for this piece. And her verdict on the scholarship was clear: “We should know these things.”
It’s 10:30 on a Thursday morning, and Mr. McAfee’s juniors are warming up for class.
“Head voice!” he calls out, then “Chest voice!” and the row of students whooeep and heeay and hiiii, shaking from side to side before they’re told to inhale. “Now say your names, say, ‘Hi, my name is,’ and then the name of your character,” he continues. “It has to be big and full and vibrating, so everyone in the space can hear it without even trying.”
“Hi, my name is Polonius.”
“Hi, my name is Claudius.”
McAfee stops a girl in a blue sweatshirt who he doesn’t think has spoken loudly enough, and asks her to try again.
“HI, MY NAME IS OPHELIA,” she shouts.
“See you’re going to hurt your voice that way, you can’t be hurting your voice,” McAfee tells her. “You can be that loud without straining yourself. You have a lot of lines so I want to make sure everyone hears them, because you’re doing some great stuff.”
There’s a collective “awwwwww” from the other students standing on stage, and after a couple of giggles the group carries on.
“Hi, my name is Hamlet.”
“Hi, my name is Rosencrantz.”
* * *
These students are putting on “Hamlet” as a class as part of their work at the Theater Department at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School in downtown New Haven (known as the Co-op). The school is located less than two blocks from Old Campus, on the corner of College and Crown streets.
While 65 percent of students at Co-op live in New Haven, 35 percent come from outside the city. The Interdistrict Magnet Schools system provides free bus transportation to students, including those from towns such as Guilford and North Branford, and travel can take as much as an hour each way.
Like all of the 18 New Haven Magnet Schools, the only way to get into the Co-op is by a lottery which takes place in February of each year. Though no one can audition or submit a writing portfolio, students must select one of the school’s five arts departments to apply to: creative writing, visual arts, music, dance and theater.
Infinity Jean, a junior at the school, said that she was so set on working on theater that Co-op was the only school to which she applied. “It’s a good thing I got in,” she added. “Or I would have gone to Hillhouse [her neighborhood public school in New Haven].”
Jean was luckier than a lot of students: for each spot in its freshman class, the school is forced to turn away many more students than it accepts. With a total enrollment of 650, Co-op consistently has the longest waiting list each year of any school in the magnet system, according to Arts Director Suzannah Holsenbeck ’05.
A passion for the arts is not the only reason some apply to Co-op. Theater teacher Robert Esposito said that he always begins with a new group of students by asking, “Why are you here?” And for some students, the answer is simply “because my mom doesn’t want me to go to Hillhouse.
Esposito can sympathize with the parents: Co-op, he said, has a kinder environment than some surrounding neighborhood schools. On top of the Co-op’s strong academic reputation and sparkling new facilities, Esposito said students are less likely to be bullied there. The school is heavily female, and has a large openly gay community.
“I know for me, I have an 11-year-old daughter. I would love for her to come to Co-op,” Esposito said. “I think that says a lot — I totally understand why parents force their kids to come here.”
* * *
While the Co-op offers a standard, college preparatory academic track, students spend an hour and a half on their chosen arts every day — a full 25 percent of their total instructional time, and the largest concentration in any subject matter that they have.
For the first two years the theater curriculum strives to expose students to the widest possible range of aspects of theater, with freshmen focusing on ensemble building and sophomores on scene study. In these two years they’ll study everything from the Stanislavski method of acting to technical theater, read “Oedipus Rex” and learn techniques for auditioning. As juniors they’ll split off into technical and acting tracks based on students’ interests, and study Shakespeare before moving into modern drama their senior year.
Senior Frankie Douglass said that while she has always liked theater, before coming to Co-op she didn’t consider herself an artist. The Co-op school was her second choice after the Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), also located in downtown New Haven — which selects students through a merit-based, competitive application process. “It was my first time auditioning for anything,” she said. “I messed it up.”
After three and a half years at Co-op, she has realized that not only does she belong among the arts, she needs them. “I feel like we all look at the world differently now,” Douglass said. “Now situations, tragedies we go through, we can take all that and we have somewhere to put it.”
Despite representing a similar economic demographic as other area public schools, the Co-op can boast significantly higher test scores, and rates of college attendance. Of all the students who graduated from the Theater Department last year, Esposito said that maybe all but two are now in college, while noting that funding can remain an obstacle for many students from low-income families.
“When you’re dealing with any kind of at-risk population you have to give students a reason to come to school,” he said. “When they realize they have a show in a month and people are depending on [them], they’re gonna go to school. The largest step is getting them in the building.”
Senior Lyanne Segui thinks having arts every day helps their academics by giving them something to do that requires focus but still gives them a break.
Co-op students’ enthusiasm for the arts is palpable. During a break between classes, a girl asks her friend about the student dance show that took place the weekend before while fixing her hair in the bathroom mirror. Later, two boys talk about a visual arts student’s capstone project presented earlier in the day on their way to lunch. One girl in McAfee’s class actually complained that the school had closed the day before, “for just like, two inches of snow,” making the group miss a day of rehearsal for “Hamlet.”
* * *
Because of the lottery system, the students who come to Co-op each year come from very diverse backgrounds, theater teacher Christi Sargent explained: some come from arts magnet middle schools, others have little experience, or interest, in the arts at all. While this range of experience can pose a challenge to instructors, Esposito said that he wouldn’t necessarily change the system.
“There would be so many kids we’d miss out on because they wouldn’t have the confidence or savvy to come and audition,” he said. “When I look back, all the kids I think were most special and got the most out of it would never have had the guts to audition, would have had no clue they had any talent.”
And Sargent maintains that with enough hard work and focus, everyone can succeed in the theater program. One of her main tasks is simply helping those who don’t come in with a high level of confidence in themselves to grow comfortable with the kind of risk-taking theater requires.
“The people you meet in theater class are not people you’re going to meet in creative writing,” senior Yasmari Collazo said. “They’re out there, they don’t care, that weirdness rubs off on you.” Simone Ngongi, a junior, said the Co-op theater program has helped her get used to stepping out of her comfort zone.
Esposito said that the Co-op is not immune from problems that plague lower-income schools, such as students who come in with low reading levels, and with a correspondingly low level of faith in their own abilities. Nevertheless, teaching at Co-op is “easy” compared to the Fair Haven Middle School where he began working as a teacher.
The main task for Esposito is to focus on what students do well and build from that, no matter how small the victories may seem at first. He recalled one past student who, when first asked to do a presentation as a freshman, simply lost her breath and ran out of the room. But by her senior year, he said, she was the lead in the class mainstage.
Sargent said one of her current freshman initially broke down in tears when asked to participate in class, and she had to work in small increments to overcome her fears. “Every day I gave her new goals to accomplish,” Sargent said, “Tomorrow she’s going to be in her first play.”
* * *
Sargent does not push her kids to go into theater professionally, and doesn’t see that as the purpose of the program. “I want to show students how this can change their lives in terms of confidence,” she said. “These skills transition to all aspects of life, whether you want to be a nurse or a secretary.”
When it comes to the future, students themselves are largely pragmatic. According to Segui, most of her classmates don’t plan to pursue theater because they want to be financially stable, not because they don’t enjoy it. Douglass said that she plans to be a culinary nutritionist in college, and perhaps someday later she will go back to acting, perhaps even attend a conservatory.
But though Segui is very aware of the uncertainty involved in a career in theater, she is certain that she wants to pursue it nevertheless.
“There’s just never been anything else I’ve found as interesting,” she said.
Collazo, who recently finished her college applications, said that she used to dream of growing up to be a famous actress and starring in movies, but that over the years her perspective has gotten a dose of reality.
“I realized I need a game plan,” she laughed. But while Collazo said acting isn’t the main thing she wants to focus on in college, she was equally apprehensive about quitting it altogether. “How do you let go of something you do every day?” she said. “This school takes the arts and really shoves them into our personalities.”
