Shared Contemplations in the Convent

The Medievalist has read, in her few weeks offline, that culture is best understood as “shared understandings.” This is a useful paradigm, as her beloved professors would say; the Medievalist thinks that it is a simple truth.

To enjoy her return back to the light, the Medievalist would like to elaborate on a few of the shared understandings of the Convent. They are numerically ordered but not numerically significant.

1. First Class: this is the girl we love to hate, the boy we hate to love, the music we complain about and then purchase. First Class is the silent signal of the Sisters. Because it is silent, we bemoan its existence and pretend to welcome the advent of Saint Zimbra and Saint Sakai. However, because we use it to communicate, we worship at its small altar in secret.

2. Serving Success: We all serve the same God, although she may reveal herself in different forms. No, the Medievalist is not referring to a cultural or technically religious god. This God of Success is worshipped by the pre-med Sisters, the pre-law Sisters, the pre-vet and pre-dental and pre-grad and pre-life sisters.

3. Pre-Life: Sisters at Wellesley, perhaps more than at any other convent or monastery, have a shared confusion about life at Wellesley. We prepare more for life after our beloved convent than we often do for our life here. The same sanctimonious Sisters who have their ten-year-plan to achieve Secretary of Health often do not sleep enough, do not exercise or eat with a sense of moderation (moderate salads, moderate cream cheese brownies.) We are all pre-Life.

4. Vocation: with few exceptions, all Sisters are here because they are Called. Wellesley does not accept those who merely toil without a sense of Vision. All Sisters are driven by their Call, a deliberate belief that they will achieve significance in this vain world. It is a horrible master, this Call; but also beautiful, as it reveals itself in Tanner presentations and precious lunchtime confessions and pieces of artwork in the Jewett Gallery.

We are all Called, for the better good of the Convent.. Now the Medievalist is called back to her rituals of devotion to Health, a personal favorite saint.

Stress Be With You

Pax vobiscum will answer all queries. If you go or come, eat or drink, bless or ban, Pax vobiscum carries you through it all. It is as useful to a friar as a broom-stick to a witch, or a wand to a conjuror. - Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

The quote derives from the scene where young Cedric must impersonate a friar but doesn't know how to behave like one. In Scott's medieval world, friars (journeyman monks) are known by their Latin responses. When faced with any question, a friar says, Pax vobiscum. In English, this means Peace be with you.

If Cedric had been trying to infiltrate the ranks of Wellesley Convent, he would have tweaked the response just a little. In order to really imitate a Sister, the response is Dolor tecum. Loosely translated, this means Stress be with you.

Sisters walk, run, bike and gallop across their beloved campus and once in a while they run into each other. This only happens when the studious Sisters raise their eyes from the ground -- the holy dirt of the Convent must be looked at more than any dirt on any other part of the Earth. The problem with stopping and talking with fellow Sisters is that everyone is so busy, so tired and so afraid of feeling inferior that human contact is unadvisable.

Still, once in a while, a bus carrying Oprah's Leadership School students gets in a Sister's way and she is forced to stand and talk with the other Sister from somewhere. There is a strict formula, thank God, to these interactions so no nun has to be creative.

Sister One: Hello!

Sister Two: Hi! How are you?

S1: Good, busy. I'm actually really tied up right now, which is why I haven't emailed you.

S2: God, I know. I haven't had a moment to breathe all day.

S1: My whole week's been like this. I keep on thinking it will get better but--

S2: It never does! I think I've been like this since the Convent recovened.

S1: You're so right. We should really get together sometime. I have a meeting with Mother Superior tomorrow, and then I'm interviewing Our Holy Father Obama on Thursday for the New York Times --

S2: Wow, that's so cool! I just finished my biography of Our Holy Father and my literary agent said that I'm going to crack the New York Times bestseller list! We have like the same activities!

S1: I need to go pray to Success now, so sorry. Send me a secret signal via First Class!

S2: Totally! Stress be with you!

S1: Stress be with you!

Having completed this formulaic but necessary exchange, each Sister walks off into the opposite direction feeling completely inferior about her own activities. She walks faster to get to her own altar to Success, thinks of five new ways she can improve her GPA, and gives no second glance to Oprah's Leadership School girls driving away in the distance.

O Holy Racoon Eyes

In the Roman Rite, the beginning of the forty days of penance is marked with the austere symbol of ashes which is used in [Ash Wednesday]'s liturgy. The use of ashes is a survival from an ancient rite according to which converted sinners submitted themselves to canonical penance. - Catholic Culture

Traditionally in the Catholic and now Anglican and Episcopalian churches, members go to church on Ash Wednesday to observe the beginning of Lent. Lent, for the uninitiated, is a time of deprivation and reflection to prepare oneself for the gloriousness of Easter.

How do the Sisters treat this tradition?

When the Sisters re-enter the Convent for the start of the Spiritual Year of Success, their eyes are bright and their concealer unused. They have slept this summer, regardless of their internship or job or position as head of a groundbreaking NGO in Tunisia or Montenegro or some country that is about to become popular for receiving aid (probably because of the NGO.)

They arrive, and in these past five weeks, they have begun to celebrate the season of Lent. For the Sisters, Lent is no mere forty-day period; it encompasses the time between Lake Day and December 20th, the day Finals are finalized. To prepare for this season of deprivation and no reflection at all, the Sisters don their ashes.

These ashes take a curious form at the Convent: they are dark shadows underneath the eye of each devout Sister. This is not the lack of Neutrogena Eye-Makeup Remover (works on waterproof mascara!) but the sign of convent devotion. The really sincere Sisters add bags to their eyes, to have three-dimensional proof of their love of Success.

Lent is a time of sacrifice to understand what God really means to us. For the Sisters, our Lent is a time of sacrificing health to attain Success. It is a delightful time of stress-filled coffee binges, extraordinary achievement, and ashy eyes.

The Sweet Animals of Symbolic Value and Virtue

The Medievalist would post a picture of a squirrel, or chipmunk, or several; however, she is suspicious of the Modern Technology that allows people to track things that should be non-trackable.

When one visits the Convent in the fall, as the leaves turn stunning red and gold along with the stress tests of its inhabitants, one hears the frantic footsteps of the wild rodents still adjusting to their world's disruption. The squirrels perch on trashcans, nibbling at whatever non-recyclable waste he can find. The chipmunks, particular favorites of the Medievalist, run faster than pre-meds to the Science Center, terrified that a giant foot will trample them.

The Medievalist turns to her brother in Orders, St. Francis of Assisi, for the lesson. According to the Noble Source, Francis once paused a journey to preach to "his sisters, the birds."

The Sisters of this Convent show particular disregard for their sisters in disguise, whether bewinged or betailed or befooted. Perhaps, the Sisters understand too well that they are just like the squirrels eating out of the trashcan and the chipmunks racing out of sight. Too many of us eat like rodents and are so frightened of a looming professor, that we risk looking foolish to avoid feeling so.

The Medievalist would apologize for moralizing, but that would betray her principles. She counsels all to consider the beauty of the squirrel tail, bobbing off to find some better food than he could find at the Wang.

Thank You

The wait is nearly over.

Suddenly I See That's Who I Wanna Be

First, the Medievalist apologizes for the rather extended pause for nerdiness. Once the school year begins, her routines shall become more fixed.

This evening I am interested in the nature of habits. Habits, not the brushing of teeth, are the clothing of the Sisters. At many places of worship, there is a Standard Habit for its monks and nuns. Worshippers wear the standard Habit of success-seekers: sweatpants/denim, the ubiquitous unfunny T-shirt that was passe' five years ago, hair tied back and no sign of the make-up drawer.

At the Convent, there are no Standards. The Superiors have not laid down a Standard Habit, nor have the Sisters Who Run Things (typically elected to office on shiny pink posters). The result is a dichotomy of dress that confuses the novitiate.

There are three kinds of Habits. They are mostly dependent on what kind of internships the Sisters will take up during their stay at the Convent.

Interns Whose Goal is: Vogue/Elle/Place of Major Political Power. These Sisters dress to suppress all feelings of confidence in their peers. The Medievalist fears that these Sisters spend more on their annual wardrobe than the Medievalist's parents actually pay towards tuition. What is truly frightening is that despite the incredible time constraints of WST (Wellesley Standard Time), these girls manage to construct runaway-worthy outfits. And I do runaway.

Interns Whose Goal is: Smartypants magazine like Salon and Slate / Unimportant politican / Weird magazine nobody's heard of but will become the new Huffington in five years. These are more average college students, as these Sisters prize moderation. Three or four days a week, they don the Slugabed Outfit because they worked an extra five minutes on their paper instead of hunting for the mascara. But a few times a week, they will put on pleasant-looking blouses and nice necklaces and beam smiley faces at everyone in their sight.

Interns Whose Goal is: Normalcy. Sweatpants, baggy jeans, t-shirts from every extracurricular known to AP student.

The moderate group is outbalanced by the Amazons and the Slugs. The real way to become a standout Sister at the Convent, to gain more Social Clout with the Saints (alive and dead), and to achieve more of Success, is to move up the Intern Social Hierarchy.

At this Convent, despite any movement towards Inner Beauty, the Habits make the Nun.

Pause for Nerdiness

Yes, this is a real castle.