Oh, Sweet Baby J.
“I dunno,” I answered. “Princeton?”
“Noooooooo,” he mooed. “It was Brown! It was Brown! Ahahahahaha. Ahahahahaha.” I half-expected him to break out into a Rumplestiltskin dance.
You know what?
Suck it, GQ. You’re just jealous.
I am a proud graduate of Brown University’s Class of 1999. And I love my college. Love it. Like, I love it for real. I love it like a fat kid loves cake.* I love it so much that upon my recent return from my 10th year reunion, I drove many non-Brunonians insane by referring to alumni weekend as “magical…simply magical!”**
So I think you’re just jealous, GQ, jealous that you did not go to the most awesome college in the whole world. Yes, it’s true that there are/were/will be students at Brown with the following affectations: “A belief that grades, majors, and course requirement are just another form of cultural hegemony; using the word hegemony.” I myself have acquired a just-a-little-bit douchy habit of regularly using words like diaspora, privilege, mise-en-scene, and oligarchy in conversation. Ahem.
And yes, in 10 years some Brown alumni may be “[l]iving with [their]family in an old house that [they] quit [their] job to refurbish[themselves] (by overseeing a contractor) with painstaking historical accuracy in a formerly decaying section of the city that’s recently been reclaimed by a small population of which guys in hand-painted T-shirts who are helping [them] put together a health care fund-raiser for MoveOn.org, and meanwhile furtively being obsessed with the growth and decline of [their] sizeable inheritance and carrying on an email affair with a stripper, all the while leading a campaign against gluten and dabbling in absinthe.”
So I’m not saying that these are falsehoods or un-funnies, GQ. I’m just saying that my love for my alma mater is greater than any douchebaggery you can throw at me. I don’t exactly know why – but I know that a lot of my fellow Brown Bears feel the same way. Just take a trip to Alumni/Commencement weekend and witness the cheering crowds of alumni and soon-to-be grads performing “the inverted sock" to see what I mean.
As my friend KG (’98) would say, college was hard, y’all. I was never not broke. I went from living in Mo-Champ to living in the Grad Center.*** My class schedule was batshit insane. I worked 20 hours/week at The Gate. I probably ingested triple the recommended daily amount of calories. I once took too many No-Doz pills and had a Jessie Spano-style freakout at 4:30am (I’m so excited…I’m so ex…cited. I’m so…I’m so…I’m so scared. Whimper.) from which I didn’t come down for 12 hours. There was a bar near campus that only let in students of color on Thursdays. The coffee at Café la France was horrific. Store24 engaged in brazen false advertising – it closed at midnight. I still get breathless thinking about how many stairs I had to climb to get to the Pembroke Cluster. I cried. I missed my parents. I got sick of being poor. After my 21st birthday party, I somehow ended up on Health Services' binge drinkers list.
But I really liked most of my courses: I learned about the Dinka people of Sudan, and one time a history professor gave an entire lecture dressed as a gangster and speaking in the Vito Corleone voice. I went to Sex-Power-God parties on Saturday nights and Catholic mass on Sunday mornings. (An added bonus to eternal salvation? They had post-mass bagels and coffee, which was literally a godsend for those of us who had gone off meal plan. And the most multicultural church choir you have ever seen in your life. Plus the priest drove a sweet little red sports car). My male co-workers made sure to walk me home after the end of 9pm-1am shift. My roommates were Applied Math and Computer Science majors, and had absolutely no idea what I did in my political science classes. I used to stay up with one of them and karaoke to Wilson Phillips songs. The Dunkin Donuts’ clerk with the dragon nails knew just how I liked my coffee, and that my preferred pastry was a bear claw. I learned how to balance work and fun. I learned how to dance banda and make pizza. I learned how to communicate via “electronic mail” and used a card catalog for the last time in my life.
Plus, I got to meet some of the most amazing, interesting, fascinating people in the world. Friends who helped me through my high school-induced PTSD, who were there for me during a time of unbelievable family tragedy, who would come hang out with me at my cashier station just for the fun of it, who would drive me to Wal-Mart so I could buy the trashy novels I needed to use as reference for my anthro paper on representations of Native Americans in popular culture. I met them at work, in class, in the dorms, at student club meetings, in self-defense classes – everywhere and anywhere. Friends who I still admire more than anything else in this world. Friends with whom I am still in daily touch and friends who I’ve gone 10 years without seeing only to meet them in foreign capitals and slip right back into comfortable patterns. Koodooze, Yousi, koodooze. I’m sorry I was such a crankypants that last night.
So maybe my passionate adoration of Brunonia is fueled by friendships I made? My thought-provoking academic education? The arch sings? Paragon, East Side Pockets, and Ocean’s coffee? (Yes. Yes. I was quite the chubster in in college.) The Underground? The fact that just last month I finally finished paying off my undergraduate loans?
Whatever it is, I’m sorry that some people – people whose names start with K-I-M and end with I-L-L-M-A-T-I-C, people who belonged to dining clubs or hated Cambridge or had a mediocre college experience, or went to Brown and hated it or people who have no idea what Brown University is – can’t respect the love. To them I sweetly sing
We are ever true to Brown,
For we love our college dear,
And wherever we may go,
We are ready with a cheer,
And the people always say,
That you can't outshine Brown Men (and Women!)
With their Rah! Rah! Rah!
And their Ki! Yi! Yi!
And their B-R-O-W-N!
I love you, Bruno!
*Crap. I think that saying is p-l-a-y-e-d o-u-t. I don’t want to hear A WORD from my little brother about how lame I am, ok?
**You wish I were kidding.
*** Unit 18 represent!
© Chommo, 2009.