Reasons Why I'm a Feminist This Week

Last week, I had the pleasure of getting to hear a personal hero of mine, Jessica Valenti, speak. She gave an inspiring and powerful talk that reaffirmed all the reasons that I call myself a feminist and am proud to do so. In my teaching work, I meet a lot of young, intelligent women who are hesitant about the label, usually because they imagine it means they have to stop shaving their legs and start attending man-hating rallies. Or just get a lot more pissed off about stuff. As Valenti noted, a quick Google image search confirms these stereotypes - the first subcategory that comes up is "angry."

Valenti began her talk addressing this issue of young women not wanting to call themselves or be called feminists. And then she explained why she was a feminist THIS week, as in, the recent events that fuel her to do the work she's doing (which is blogging about women's & gender issues for The Nation and generally being an awesome activist role model).

So I'm going to steal a page from Valenti's playbook and tell you why I'm a feminist this week.

1. The reports coming out of Emerson College (where I went to grad school) re: their failure to take sexual assault reports seriously. This is the case on far too many college campuses -- administrators prefer to handle the matter without actual police involvement, and as result, rapists get wrist-slaps and the female students brave enough to come forward and report their assault end up feeling traumatized all over again.

2. On a related note, this well-intentioned but highly problematic Slate article by "Dear Prudence" columnist Emily Yoffe, which implies that if college women get less drunk, they would get assaulted less frequently. So if you're drunk, you're kind of asking for it, maybe? A firestorm of debate has erupted over this piece (and some great satire, like this piece that reverses the genders and advises men to drink less so as to not end up raping women), and while obviously underage binge-drinking is a problem in its own right, suggesting causality (as opposed to correlation) is dangerous and dumb. If you need a refresher on causality vs. correlation, this graph does a good job: 

3. Speaking of rape culture, this video by an Indian sketch comedy group is the best thing I've watched on the internet in a while. It's funny and also incredibly disturbing.


4.  The fact that Plan B costs $50. I don't know why that's bugging me this week, but it is -- it's legal without a prescription, which is good, but it's not exactly in an accessible price range.

5. Finally, I came across this over the weekend when I was perusing a website listing 100 easy Halloween costume ideas.

                          53. Gift box or Christmas gift (suggested for a young girl)

Emphasis mine. I'm really dying to know why this is a great costume for little girls -- to further remind them that they are a prize waiting to be unwrapped? Sounds a lot like the subject of Valenti's 2009 book, The Purity Myth, which was also made into a documentary. Watch the trailer here:



Young women shouldn't grow up thinking that their self-worth and their sexual identities are intertwined. Your decision to have sex or not have sex does not impact your value as a human being. The whole mythos surrounding the hymen is out of control - as this excellent "How Stuff Works" podcast explains, it isn't, as most people think, a membrane that can be punctured, but rather a ring of tissue that gets stretched from a variety of activities (and never, even when "'intact," completely covers the vaginal opening). SCIENCE!  

So that's what's making me a feminist this week.

The Trouble with Commencement Speeches

Well, to put it succinctly: they are boring and cliched, by definition.

I myself learned this firsthand when asked to deliver the graduation speech at my former elementary school when my younger brother was "graduating" from 6th grade. (Side note: I really think graduation ceremonies should be saved for high school and college. I am attending another brother's graduation from middle school next week and while I'm thrilled to be able to visit him and happy that he passed 8th grade and can start high school next year, I don't know, it just seems like a gimmick to get the parents all mushy and proud so they'll give more money.)

At any rate, in 1999 I was a high school senior. As I was not valedictorian of my class (far from it), I was not the speaker at my graduation. But as a "distinguished" alum from the elementary school where my brother Richard was graduating, I was invited to speak at his ceremony. Thus I was faced with writing a speech to inspire 6th graders and their parents. My first issue was that it felt disingenuous to tell them about what they had to look forward to, namely middle school. Which almost all survivors agree constitute a dark time of early adolescence. Bye bye, recess; hello, 4 hours of Spanish homework. Also hello body odor, pubic hair, awkward growth spurts, and pimples. We can't all look like Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, folks.

But of course I couldn't talk about any of that in my speech. I had to be positive, congratulatory, and assure these young adults that the years ahead of them would be exciting and wonderful. I think "challenging" was about the only adjective I used to hint at the vortex of unpleasantness they were about to be unknowingly sucked into. So I felt like a charlatan. I quoted someone predictable, told them they were ready to reach for the stars or some shit and the parents ate it up. They even reprinted my speech in the next school newsletter.

This past Monday, I graduated from Emerson College's Creative Writing Master's program. Some of my peers chose not to participate in commencement, but hell, I spent the dough and felt like I deserved some fucking fanfare. Mainly, I wanted to see if anyone speaking could convince that my $60,000 was well-spent. Let's just say I was a tough crowd.

The main speaker was some Communication Ethics guy who was being awarded an honorary degree. And boy, did his speech suck. It had nothing to do with anything remotely related to Emerson or graduation or life. I think I might actually have preferred a conventional address. But what are the conventions of a commencement speech? Allow me to provide some handy guidelines:

-- a quote from Mark Twain and/or Gandhi

-- an inside joke about the institution so not inside that even the parents will chuckle/"get it", i.e. reference to terrible dining hall food

-- A Lincoln anecdote

-- sobering mention of recent tragic event/disaster (tsunami, tornado, ABC's Private Practice renewed for another season)

-- vague references to the future, leadership, dreams, tomorrow, change, endings, beginnings

and voila! Commencement speech. Next time I attend a graduation, I think I'll make up a bingo card with all of the above on it. I bet I get bingo several times over.

Man, I am getting grouchy and cynical in my old age.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

A good friend of mine (and fellow Emerson poet) recently launched an online poetry journal: Interrupture. The first issue went live in February and contains some excellent poems. This one is by another Emerson graduate, the delightful Mary Kovaleski Brynes. She's been published in a number of places and is currently living in Spain. Anyway, I love how feverish this poem is -- I think the repetitions are well done and well placed, and the piece has a sensual rhythm, not to mention amazing images. Me likey (and hope you do, too).

Maybe This Happens to Everyone

When I woke, Paris was in flames.

I spent the day in bed while a man I loved

kissed my ankles, the white arches

of my feet, asked what made them,

and I told him it was the Sacre Cœur--

when a city is burning like that there’s no time

for lies. At night the flames were in my hair,

the flames were in his mouth and each street

unrolled like a long tongue that gave

us what we couldn’t understand,

only if we’d dance on the cobbles

they’d light up like the disco floors

of les Grands Boulevards, like the smooth-trodden

gravestones of popes inside the cathedral,

the martyrs emblazoned on the Bastille.

I don’t remember the Bastille.

It is impossible to remember the Bastille

when his hand is up my dress on the metro

and Paris is in flames. The trains

brought us in through a tunnel underwater:

the Chunnel was made of glass,

the train like a chain of dolphins linked end to end,

arching silver with the currents,

and we saw Humpbacks, eyes big as our train car,

slow and bovine—it took minutes to pass them.

Their whale eyes were looking at us—

everyone in Paris was looking at us.

We weren’t looking at anyone, and when we did

their faces were like mirrors and I loved

his strange watery reflection but kissed only him.

The trains came. The trains moved out

of the blue-glass station while we ate crepes Nutella

and called them crapes because we were Americans.

The trains came. The trains moved out.

Our train moved out.

We stayed. Paris lit and smoldered.

Maybe this was the beginning of the world again, maybe

it was the end—maybe this happens to everyone

in every city, even in small towns, where corn fields

catch fire at the end of summer

and teenagers tear off their clothes

and run naked through them, tempting

the flames with their flawless skin,

but it won’t brand them, won’t even singe,

no matter how hard they run.

The writing on the wall, er, stall

One week from today, I will teach my first class in a course designed entirely by me. The only parameters: the class must involve a research component and introduce the students to multiple genres (i.e. other than the academic essay). Most instructors choose a theme or topic around which to build their class. My topic is the Women's Movement. Here is my course description:
will explore how informed writing can affect (and has affected) social/political
WR121: The Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves

This course will explore how informed writing can effect (and has effected) social/political change in the United States, as viewed through the lens of the Women’s Movement from the 19th century to the present. This is not, however, a class for or of interest only to women – in the context of this course, women will be considered as a social group with a history of advocating for legal rights and other privileges. We will examine the various waves of feminism, looking at why some movements were successful (the passage of the 19th amendment, granting suffrage) while others were not (the never-passed Equal Rights Amendment), as well as what the label of “feminist” means today. Political cartoons, op-eds, speeches, biographies, and blogs will be among the genres we study, and the course will culminate in a fieldwork-based group project where students will design an advocacy campaign for a local women’s organization. No prior knowledge of the Women’s Movement or feminism is required.


Now, when I came up with this, I was under the impression that this year, as it had been in previous years, the freshmen would be able to read the various section descriptions and select a topic that interested them. I was also assuming I'd have a class of mostly women, like last semester (ratio of women to men was 13:1). However, neither of these assumptions is true. For the first time, freshmen advisers slotted students randomly into sections regardless of their majors/interests and according to my class list, I will have 6 men and 9 women in my class.

Upon learning these things, I initially freaked out and considered going with a different topic. Oh God, I thought, what if I get a bunch of kids who think Hillary Clinton is a feminazi? Or think women should remain barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?

But I'm sticking to my guns, folks. My boss supports me, though acknowledges that making my course palatable and accessible to a variety of 18-year-old viewpoints will be, to say the least, a challenge. But as one friend reminded me, making freshmen write about something outside their comfort zone is not a terrible objective. My junior year in college, I took a Women's Studies course to fulfill a requirement and I was way more into it than I thought I would be. Do I have a secret agenda to make all my students militant feminists? No. But do I think it's important for college students, regardless of gender, to learn about the victories and defeats of one of the most significant, complex and (arguably) ongoing American social movements? Absolutely.

And while I'm not superstitious, something happened to me yesterday that I'm interpreting as a sign that I made the right choice. I found something tucked away in a book from college -- a transcription of graffiti from a ladies room bathroom stall of the (no longer existent) Cross Campus Library at Yale. I stared at this graffiti conversation and watched it evolve over several semesters before finally deciding to write it down. And yesterday, I found the scrap of notebook paper. The graffiti "debate" was as follows and try to imagine lots of different handwriting, Sharpie colors etc:

When do I turn into a woman?

What is a woman?

Never

When you kiss a frog

When you sway your hips

When you decide or discover you are one

When you have a child <----that's ridiculous, not all women can have children

or want to

It's when you love yourself

When you can look back & want to move forward


I found this so compelling then and reading it again now, am still struck by it, especially the last comment, the one that silenced the other scrawlers: When you can look back & want to move forward. Isn't that why we study the history of anything?

A shout-out to Emerson undergrads

After a semester of teaching the Emerson class of 2014, I have to say, I'm impressed with their creativity, humor, and resourcefulness. A while back, my alma mater Yale put out a musical admissions video. It was well-made, but kind of too slick for my taste. The Emerson equivalent, I think, is much funnier and more likely to actually appeal to potential applicants. The video has gone viral and was featured on Jezebel this week -- in case you missed it, I'm posting it below.



As a final project in the writing class I teach at Emerson, I asked my students to "take an approach" (i.e. update/subvert/twist) a classic fairytale. I gave them the freedom to use any medium they wanted and many chose to make videos of some sort. One group turned Goldilocks into a modern-day BU sorority girl blogging about her romantic conquests; another made a satirical indie film trailer that I find very amusing -- click here to watch.

We had our last class on Monday and toward the end of the period, I asked students to share their favorite memory from the semester. One student spilled the beans that at one point, they all discovered my blog and several of them were looking at it during class, unbeknownst to me. I apparently kept asking them what was so funny. I mean, I'm not at all surprised that they found my blog -- when you Google me, it's the first hit -- but I do think it's funny that they were so secretive about it (and proud of themselves for not letting on that they'd found it).

I'm looking forward to meeting a new crop of Emerson freshmen in January and hope they are as awesome as my current group. If any of them are reading this, YOU RULE and I hope you keep me posted about your performances and achievements.

That's "Professor Vagnino" to you

Great news: after a grueling and fiercely competitive application/interview process, I have successfully landed a teaching position at Emerson for the 2010-2011 school year!

I will be teaching two courses: Intro to College Writing in the fall, and Research Writing in the spring. Both are freshmen composition courses that meet 3 times a week (each class is 75 minutes). The pay is basically slave's wages, but I'm not complaining -- I love teaching writing and this will be great experience and hopefully open up other professional opportunities after I leave Emerson.

The first semester course is pretty structured -- already broken down into four units and all the readings come from books that the department has chosen. I'm more excited for the research writing course, which is much more open and allows students to experiment in different genres. Instead of position papers, I can assign them to write memoirs, graphic novels, op-ed columns, manifestos, press releases, film reviews, blogs -- whatever genre/rhetorical situation I deem fit that will require them to do some research into the genre's requirements and audience. And I get to pick all the readings. Mwahahahahaha!

The research writing course can also involve some multimedia projects, if you subscribe to composition theory god Joseph Harris's belief that "texts" are not just written documents. Texts are "objects that have been made and designed -- artifacts that can in some way be shelved, filed, or stored and then retrieved and reexamined" (Rewriting 11). Under this definition, texts can include movies, songs, plays, advertisements, photographs, web pages etc. Emerson students are very tech-savvy, so I plan to take advantage of this. Check out some of these "texts" that were created by freshmen who were studying PSAs as a genre:











Pretty impressive....anyway, I can't wait to start crafting my syllabus!

Emerson College class of 2014: I look forward to meeting you.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

This week's poem is by Emerson faculty member Gail Mazur, who studied poetry under Robert Lowell. I will be taking a workshop led by her in the fall and based on this poem, I'm pretty excited about it. I love the first line of this poem -- it draws you right in. And while the narrative of the poem is literally about a trip to the zoo, there is so much else going on with the speaker. It's really well done and the wonderful moments of humor in the poem make its profundity all the more poignant.

In Houston

I’d dislocated my life, so I went to the zoo.

It was December but it wasn’t December. Pansies

just planted were blooming in well-groomed beds.

Lovers embraced under the sky’s Sunday blue.

Children rode around and around on pastel trains.

I read the labels stuck on every cage the way

people at museums do, art being less interesting

than information. Each fenced-in plot had a map,

laminated with a stain to tell where in the world

the animals had been taken from. Rhinos waited

for rain in the rhino-colored dirt, too grief-struck

to move their wrinkles, their horns too weak

to ever be hacked off by poachers for aphrodisiacs.

Five white ducks agitated the chalky waters

of a duck pond with invisible orange feet

while a little girl in pink ruffles

tossed pork rinds at their disconsolate backs.

This wasn’t my life! I’d meant to look

with the wise tough eye of exile, I wanted

not to anthropomorphize, not to equate, for instance,

the lemur’s displacement with my displacement.

The arched aviary flashed with extravagance,

plumage so exuberant, so implausible, it seemed

cartoonish, and the birdsongs unintelligible,

babble, all their various languages unravelling—

no bird can get its song sung right, separated from

models of its own species.

For weeks I hadn’t written a sentence,

for two days I hadn’t spoken to an animate thing.

I couldn’t relate to a giraffe—

I couldn’t look one in the face.

I’d have said, if anyone had asked,

I’d been mugged by the Gulf climate.

In a great barren space, I watched a pair

of elephants swaying together, a rhythm

too familiar to be mistaken, too exclusive.

My eyes sweated to see the bull, his masterful trunk

swinging, enter their barn of concrete blocks,

to watch his obedient wife follow. I missed

the bitter tinny Boston smell of first snow,

the huddling in a cold bus tunnel.

At the House of Nocturnal Mammals,

I stepped into a furtive world of bats,

averted my eyes at the gloomy dioramas,

passed glassed-in booths of lurking rodents—

had I known I’d find what I came for at last?

How did we get here, dear sloth, my soul, my sister?

Clinging to a tree-limb with your three-toed feet,

your eyes closed tight, you calm my idleness,

my immigrant isolation. But a tiny tamarin monkey

who shares your ersatz rainforest runs at you,

teasing, until you move one slow, dripping,

hairy arm, then the other, the other, the other,

pulling your tear-soaked body, its too-few

vertebrae, its inferior allotment of muscles

along the dead branch, going almost nowhere

slowly as is humanly possible, nudged

by the bright orange primate taunting, nipping,

itching at you all the time, like ambition.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

This week's selection is by Peter Jay Shippy, an Emerson alum who now teaches writing at the college. Yay Emerson!

Unbelieve

I unbelieve I was born and wore
A sailor's suit until I was seven.
There are no pictures of puppies licking
My face or albums of vacation snaps.
Yosemite? Niagara Falls? I unbelieve
There's someone somewhere who likes the same things
I do. Reading the dictionary?
The Buffalo Bills? See? I unbelieve a priest
Would fuck anyone, certainly not me.
The woman who pushes the baby carriage
Up and down the block all day all week
Screaming and singing lullabies is not
Doing so well, I unbelieve, no.
Someone should lift a finger and give her
A helping hand, because charity
I unbelieve, begins in the home.
Who said that? Who said that? I unbelieve if
I can't recall then it must have been me.
A stitch in time saves nine? I shall return?
That's all folks? I have wasted my life?
That was me--the man who is the measure
Of all things. My sister told me about
The birds and the bees and I unbelieved
Every word she said, because she was older
Wiser, stronger, meaner, an early bloomer--
A girl who the world would soon get to know.
I still can't unbelieve that she's dead. I do.
I unbelieve the earth is flat or that man
Walked on the moon or that I came down
From African apes or that Jesus
Walked on water that he turned into wine
Or that life begins when I imagine
Doing it with you. I unbelieve fairies
Live in the television set--really
Think about it? Isn't it just common sense?
The sun was warm? The cherry blossoms
Were in bloom? We paddled a wooden canoe
Down the canal? I thought the port was sweet?
I pretended not to see the worm
In the Cobb salad? The inn had a surprise
Vacancy? I felt dizzy? I awoke
With a sack over my head, tied to the bed
And I was bleeding and I unbelieve
I told the police I couldn't remember, yes
I couldn't be sure of a thing. Bambi?
Jules and Jim? The Sound of Music? Red Desert?
I unbelieve that was the first movie
I ever saw, although really, it was a film.
I unbelieve the President means
Exactly what he says--don't you? The night
My son was born I was driving my truck
Across the U.P. trying to finish
My deliveries and then make the delivery,
If you know what I mean and I was just
Twenty miles out of Sault Ste. Marie
When I saw the most beautiful shooting star
And it was awesome, too, like blue like
Propane gas and scary, too, I pulled
Over to the side of the road and I'm sure
My mouth was a black hole and I wish
I would have thought to take a picture
And I unbelieve that that was my son's soul
Soaring back to heaven, I do, because
That was the very moment he passed.
If you unbelieve me go and check
With the hospital. I want you to.
I unbelieve that sometimes life forces you
To grow up before your time. Who said that?
I unbelieve that Lois Lane didn't know
That Clark was Superman. Think about it?
She just didn't want to spoil the good times.
I unbelieve that most people are fine, yet
I wouldn't open my front door
For just anyone. I pretty much un-
Believe in the war and yet I absolutely
Unbelieve that I am un-American.
Didn't I serve my country? Didn't I die
For you and unbelieve that you'd die, too?
I unbelieve in reincarnation.
I unbelieve that everyone has a twin--
Someone somewhere who looks or acts just like
You and me I mean, we're unique, unless
We're clones. I unbelieve that on the day
That I was born my grandfather cried
And this was a man who never shed a tear.
Even when they took his voice, or so I hear.

I broke the gym.

Yesterday, at approximately 2:45 p.m., there was a massive power outage at the Emerson gym. A massive power outage that I may or may not have caused.

Before I explain exactly what happened, let me just say that haplessness seems to be one of my core personality traits. I fall down sometimes for no reason. I once cut myself with a spoon and no, it was not a serrated grapefruit spoon. I have locked myself out of more cars and apartments than I can count. Once I have managed to lock myself out with the added bonus of having left my cell phone and wallet locked inside my apartment as well. That was an adventurous day. I guess I'm just accident-prone. So what happened to me at the gym is par for the course. Quite simply, it couldn't have happened to anyone else.

I worked out and then took a shower. Then I got dressed and decided it would be nice to blow-dry my hair with one of the hairdryers provided (and anchored to the wall). All I did was plug the thing in and all of the sudden, the lights went out in the locker room. Ooops, I thought. Hope no one was showering. Then I discovered that the lights were not just out in the women's locker room, but in the entire gym. The machines had all stopped. I cringe to think about the poor souls who were running on the treadmill when I decided to dry my hair.

I waited a few minutes to see if the power would come back on, but no dice. They evacuated the gym and lots of people were grumbling. I was, too -- I mean, I had to go to class with wet hair!

There's a fun little game involving how to come up with your "Viking name." Basically, you combine the first syllable of your hometown with your favorite drink. Then you follow that with "the" and then your worst quality. My Viking name is Winesaint the Hapless. What's yours?

AWP Recap

Sorry for the hiatus in posting, but I just returned to Boston after a 4-day trip to Chicago for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference. Students from Creative Writing MFA programs around the country attended, as well as authors, journalists, writing professors, and representatives from literary journals and publishing houses. There were panel discussions, readings, slams, book signings, and a lot of schmoozing/networking events with drink tickets. I'm exhausted, but overall enjoyed myself and met some interesting people in the industry.

Among my favorite panel titles:
Don't Stand so Close to Me: Controlling Narrative Distance
Jewish Poetry vs. Poetry by Jews
Gay Regionalism through the Eyes of Appalachia
Avoiding Sick Mothers, Absent Fathers, and Losing Your Virginity: The Tropes and Traps of Nonfiction
Quantum Narratology: Toward a Transactional Interpretation
I didn't actually attend any of those, but the titles tempted me. I did check out something called "Bad Poems by Great Poets," which was entertaining. It's refreshing to realize that even people like Wallace Stevens wrote a few stinkers. And to be able to discuss how much undeserved exposure Galway Kinnell's sex poem "Rapture" gets, especially around Valentine's Day. From a craft standpoint, it's just not his best.

The highlights of my AWP experience included hearing Paul Muldoon and Mary Jo Bang read and discuss their work, drinking with Emerson students at bars other than The Tam, and scoring literally dozens of free pens and notepads off tables at the Bookfair. I learned about applying for fellowships and getting published, and that unleashing a bunch of writers and academics at an open bar dance party results in utter chaos. You haven't lived until you've seen a bespectacled gray-haired professor doing the Worm.

I also found time during my stay to stop by The Wieners Circle, get dim sum in Chinatown, and enjoy a dirty martini at the very old school steakhouse Myron and Phil, as featured on the local Chicago TV show "Check, Please!" hosted by Alpana Singh.


My kind of town, Chicago is! And it just struck me how syntactically odd that song lyric is.

Note to Emerson students: Weed is still illegal

I woke up Wednesday morning still buzzed from Barack's victory to find this e-mail, from the Dean of Students at Emerson College, in my inbox:


Dear Students,

In light of yesterday’s vote to decriminalize the possession of small quantities of marijuana in Massachusetts some individuals have inquired if its passage will impact College policy. Possession is still unlawful in Massachusetts and the College is still subject to the federal Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act. That law conditions the College’s receipt of federal funds on its enforcement of standards of conduct that clearly prohibit unlawful possession, use, or distribution of illicit drugs. Thus, please be advised that the Student Code of Conduct as it pertains to marijuana possession, use, or distribution remains as written in the Student Handbook. A PDF of the Student Handbook can be found at www.emerson.edu/student_life . The College’s sanctioning guidelines for marijuana possession, use, or distribution is located on pages 92 and 93; the College’s Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) policy is located on pages 97 - 102.

***************************************************************************

Translation: it is still against college policy to smoke chronic on campus. Sorry.

I have to give mad props however to the "individuals" who needed this policy clarified. I hope they were stoner students. Stoner grad students would be even better.

I hope many of you are celebrating the passage of Prop 2 this weekend. Yes we can (and only incur a $100 fine if caught with less than an ounce)!

"Knowledge is good."

After Day 1 of Emerson orientation, which consisted of campus tours, ice-breaker games and welcome addresses given by faculty, administrators, and grad student ambassadors, this is what I learned:

1. Lewis Black is an alum!

2. There is a Will and Grace set permanently on display in the library (since the creator of W & G attended Emerson)

3. Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles are only $2.75 at The Tam

The best Craigslist roommate is no Craigslist roommate

This past weekend, I journeyed to Beantown to explore apartment options and attend a housing workshop sponsored by Emerson, where I will be starting grad school in the fall. The purpose of the workshop was to learn about the various neighborhoods in Boston and also meet potential roommates, i.e. other students new to the area who might be less suspect than weirdos on Craigslist.

I arrived at the workshop promptly at 10:00 am, when it was scheduled to begin. I was showered, casually but cutely attired, and looking as friendly-but-laid-back as possible. Upon arrival, I was handed a packet containing information about all the other Emerson students seeking housing. Turns out, most were actually undergrads and transfer students and too young for me to consider living with. Don't get me wrong, at 27 I'm still very much in my salad days and green in judgment, but I have no intention of rooming with a 19-year-old from Ohio who *hearts* Goldfrapp.

No matter, I thought, I can still maybe learn something here about what parts of Boston might be worth investigating. But alas, even that portion of the workshop was clearly designed to benefit 19-year-olds who listen to Goldfrapp and their anxious parents. There was, for example, a brief tutorial on how to ride a subway. Since I have lived in New York for the past five years, I long ago mastered not only how to ride the subway, but also how to ignore the guy on the 7 train platform in Times Square taking a dump into a pizza box. I left the workshop at 10:30 so as to avoid the icebreaker games scheduled before lunch.

Perusing ads on Craigslist later that day, I started noticing a trend: everyone describes themselves in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY and as a result, sounds totally nondescript. Just browse the roommates/shares section, and you'll see that coincidentally everyone is clean, but not a "neat freak," likes to go out with friends sometimes and also enjoys staying in, and is into really unusual things like music and film. OMG, me too!

Despairingly, I began to flip through my Emerson packet. Maybe I was being ageist. Maybe I could live with one of these youngsters, and be like that cool older sister that buys them beer. I considered contacting Doug, a rising senior from Boston, who thought it was important to note on his form that he could "beat 10 ninjas in a fight." My heart went out to Jessica, age 20, who described herself as "awesome," wrote that she "likes pina coladas" and then (adorably) crossed it out. And then there was the form filled out by someone I will call "The Fun Police," which read in part:

I'm 22 years old and despite my age I do not go out on a regular basis. I'm looking for a roommate who is over the bar/club phase because I certainly am.

I mean, props for being honest, but come on! College is all about making poor choices. Ultimately, the person that appealed to me the most was Ross from upstate NY, who seemed to be finding the whole roommate-finding business as ridiculous as I was. He wrote, in jest presumably:

I shower on a regular basis, and condition. I am trustworthy, and loveable [sic].
I don't walk around naked, ever. I do my laundry and don't pee on the toilet seat. I prefer Equal to Splenda. I like to meet new people, even head cases, as long as they have good hygiene. I love cats. Diet Coke beats Diet Pepsi. I don't play any sports. I'm nice.

I fully plan to look this dude up once I'm on campus, if only so we can talk about our shared preferences with artificial sweeteners.

After a lot of soul-searching, I decided that I'm just too damn old to live with strangers and waste time doing other people's dishes. I put down a deposit on a little studio in Allston and got on the next bus back to NYC.

**Special thanks to Daniel at Exit Realty for proving me wrong re: the existence of no-fee brokers, which I had previously believed to be as real as unicorns.