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.

How to Become a Nun

eHow has the penultimate guide. Their guide includes details like Convert to Catholicism, Don't get married or divorced, Take temporary vows, etc.

This is penultimate, of course, because the ultimate guide to becoming a Nun of the Convent resides on MBC.

The Medievalist's Guide to Becoming a Nun

1. Convert to Success. Desire it, surround your life with it, and hang pictures of Susan Rice on your vision board.

2. Forget about having a relationship. If you do, it will drain away time from Success. If you don't, you will be a more Successful nun. Those with past relationships are OK, it will give you angst and sufficient memories to fuel your dreams for the next 4 years.

3. Graduate from high school. The Convent requires all incoming Nuns to have seen High School Musical 3, read Kate Chopin and have a working knowledge of popular expletives.

4. Pretend to look at other Convents. People come and say, oh, but I'm thinking about Holyoke, or Smith, or Vassar, but that's not really a Convent any more as much as a Mixed Place for Successful people... but they know they're lying. All who come know where the true Convent is.

5. Identify orgs and majors immediately. These will become your lifeblood while at the Convent, so it is best to know them NOW.

6. Contact an unholy number of professors, org advisors, students, deans and cafeteria ladies to convince your parents you will succeed in the Convent.

7. Attend Spring Open Campus and be bedazzled by the Chapel to Western Postmodernism and the glamour of the existing Nuns. Also, draw smiley faces on the class-colored balloons.

8. Sleep on the cell floor. Once will convince you we have the best floors in the monastic world.

9. Submit your deposit. Your parents will wring their hands and try to remember that Hillary Clinton is a successful human being and not just someone who made incorrect marital decisions. Remind them that she did get married, and has anybody noticed that all the troubles in the Obama administration have not been caused by this Nun?

10. Enter the Convent. Be prepared for late-night swims, unsustainable hours of work, sleeping in the Science Center and knowing the location of Finnegan's Wake in the Clapp.

What can I say? We are truly devoted.

The Monks of MIT

BU to bed, Wellesley to wed and MIT to talk to.
- MIT fraternity explication of Boston
student women, not officially documented

Once upon a time, Wellesley Sisters cavorted with the good brothers of Harvard. They still do, of course, but the general opinion amongst the Nuns is that the brothers of Harvard have strayed from their original Rule. They used to serve Success by dating, and treating well, the Sisters of Wellesley. Those days were a Heaven by all definitions of a Heaven: the smartest men and smartest women in the nation, making uber-smart babies after uber-stylish weddings.

Those days are gone, to quote the bard Pink.

Now, the Sisters have formed a new relationship with the Monks of MIT. These Monks are a queer breed, not in terms of sexuality but in nature. To enter the Monastery, they must be fanatical worshippers of Success. Yet the Monks are ashamed of their devout reputation and instead found Fraternities, cults of the saints Alcohol and Male Stupidity, where they pretend to be popular men of the sort they weren't in high school.

The Sisters enjoy their relationship with the Monks, despite the Monks' lack of social skills and occasional use of HTML in every day language. Perhaps the Sisters like to display their own Nerd-Fanatical side, with responses in Java-Script. The words of advice quoted in the opening are offensive to the women at BU and MIT, of course, but the nuns of Wellesley know their worth.

For now, the monks of MIT enjoy their social status because they too recognize that Wellesley Sisters are in it for life.

A First Class Ticket to Silent Sisters

The refashioning of religious ideals that elevated the practice of silence to the highest constellation of Christian virtues confronted the Cluniacs with an unexpected challenge. In cloistered communities that sometimes numbered hundreds of monks, the cultivation of a strict and reverential silence conflicted with the fact that some form of communication was necessary for the operation of the abbey and the orchestration of its rituals.

Rather than relinquish their ideal of silence as an essential virtue, the monks of Cluny created a silent language of hand signs that enabled them to express their needs without recourse to any verbal exchange. - Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism, introduction

The Abbey of Cluny (emphasis, second syllable) was a lighthouse for medieval monasticism. Cluniac monasteries sprouted across Europe, following the Benedictine rule. This primarily took place around the year 1000, but there has been a renaissance of Cluniac ideals in Wellesley College.

The Sisters of the College have fully embraced the ideal of Silence. Silent Hours are put in place during the Final Masses of the Year, where poor nuns seeking to relieve their Piety with a Sandra Bullock movie are shouted at by the Superiors. Many eat alone in dining halls, seeking to cleanse their souls from the racket of incessant chitchat. And of course, most communication never takes place between a nun and another nun.

No, the Sisters use their own system of nonverbal communication: First Class. While somewhat developed from sign language, First Class allows the Sisters to talk to one another without braving actual human contact. First Class allows one to communicate with professors, administrators, even Cell Mates. The Sisters do all this communication without straying from their True Calling, homework.

Many Sisters, however, find that this religious ideal of True Calling hurts in a deep place. These Sisters keep First Class open all the time, and long to hear the Ding! of the mailbox. The Ding! is the sound of another Sister, or Monk, or Superior, reaching out across the vast emptiness of the Internet to communicate with her. It is not unheard of for Sisters to go a little mad in the head, and hear phantom Dings! where there is no real Ding!.

The Mothers Superior have cried an end to First Class, and are upgrading the nonverbal communication systems to Zimbra and Sakai, systems that vaguely suggest African roots and are more appealing than the bourgeois First Class. The Medievalist knows, however, that you may change the sign language, but you can't keep the Sisters from communicating.

Nonverbally.

FMyConfessional

If one wishes to become acquainted with the secret nature of life in the Convent, one needs to visit Wellesley FML, otherwise known as The Confessional. The purpose of Confession, for nuns in yesteryear and for many traditional Catholics/Orthodox Christians/others today, is to cleanse the soul by sharing their failures and sins.

The unique trait of the clergy and monastic community is that they both spoke confession and heard it. Those familiar with movies featuring Julie Andrews in a pixie cut will know that nuns confess to their Superiors, and their Superiors hear them.

This brings us to Wellesley FML. Begun in the fall semester of 2009, the FML is a public service for the Sisters. It allows us to relieve our guilty consciences of the men (and women) we've slept with, the teachers we've spat at and the homework we've skipped. That is, for those who post on The Confessional.

Others, like the Medievalist, simply read the Confessional and deliver Absolution. Absolution, in other contexts, means forgiveness for one's sins. The confessor gives penance: two Hail Marys, go tell your sister you broke her favorite dish, stay after Mass to help with clean-up, etc.

In the Sisters' Confessional, Absolution is delivered in three ways: Like, Dislike and Comment. The Medievalist just spent too much time delivering judgment on all sorts of sins: dieting, boring summer internships, sexual promiscuities and the lack thereof. The confident Confessors deliver Comments such as, "You poor dear, please come to Stone-D for cookies" or "You %#^&&*% %#$^&, you deserve all the $@#% you get." Stiff penance, in my view.

This public confessional is vastly different from the privacy of the box envisioned by movie directors. However, the Medievalist's professor at Wellesley College informed the class that in early periods (eighth, ninth and tenth centuries), confession was always public. If a member of a church had sinned, he or she would confess that sin to the community.

So Wellesley FML is not the propagation of a post-modern trend towards oversharing private details, nor a venue for intracollegiate gossip. No, instead it continues the medieval tradition of sharing one's burdens and confessing that we always fail to meet the standards of Success.

Our Predecessor, Gandersheim

Wellesley College's Alma Mater

The "Imperial free secular foundation of Gandersheim" (Kaiserlich freie weltliche Reichsstift Gandersheim), as it was officially known from the 13th century to its dissolution in 1810, was a community of the unmarried daughters of the high nobility, leading a godly life but not under monastic vows, which is the meaning of the word "secular" in the title.

Sound familiar?

Gandersheim Abbey's most famous pupil is Hrosvit, or Hrosvitha, a tenth-century dramatist. Not quite Nora Ephron, but close.

Speaking in Tongues, Pierced or Otherwise

"It is also said, 'A woman's tongue is her sword,'" I countered, " 'and she does not let it rust.'"

"' Maids should be mild and meek, swift to hear and slow to speak,'" said Agnes.

"'Be she old or be she young, a woman's strength is in her tongue,'" said I.

Agnes pointed her nose at me. "'One tongue is enough for two women.'"

Having run out of sayings to argue with, I pushed her and she sat hard in the eel pie.

-- Catherine Called Birdy, Karen Cushman

As the inestimable Catherine contests, one tongue is never enough for one woman. This is especially true in the Convent, where it is the vogue to speak three languages and the minimum to speak two.

This curious multiplicity of polyglots is good for the ears but bad for the soul. Sisters sharing cells with International Nuns can testify to the miraculous nature of Skype conversations at odd hours. Your cellmate usually chats with you about eighteenth-century literary revolutions in English, but switches to Hindi in order to converse with her mother about new sneakers.

International Nuns may find their Speaking Gifts natural. The Domestic Nuns must compete, through education if not through culture. Speaking only one language fluently -- that is, by not placing into a 201 level your first year -- is the same as not being blessed by the Spirit of Success at all.

The Holy Spirit of Success is that innate gifting of each Wellesley Sister that allows her to commune with Success. The Holy Spirit reveals Itself through perfect SAT scores, the ability to accomplish all one's homework in three hours once a week, and through the speaking of multiple languages. The last is the most common gifting, however, and without it one feels rather mute. Worst of all, the unolingual Sister questions whether Success has met with her at all: is she a Spiritless nun?

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. - 1 Corinthians 12: 7-11, ESV

The Sisters Tackle the Twilight Dilemma

The Medievalist recently watched the trailer from the guys who couldn't sit through another vampire movie, entitled Vampires Suck. The guys are a bit offensive: they imagine that it is only groaning boyfriends who hate Twilight. In fact, Wellesley Sisters often question the values and virtues of the worldly world of Forks.

The question for the nuns is this: to Twihard, or not to Twihard?

To Twihard is to join the younger members of the millenial generation who read the books and shriek at the movies. In fact, when Twilight was simply a popular novel, the Sisters were the target audience. Most of us were literate young women with pocket money, some with more romantic success than others.

The Twihards amongst our community feel an emotional bond with Twilight: it was part of our mixed experiences of adolescence. We were fans before RPattz, KStew and TTautAbs joined in the frenzy. We love the movies, of course, for their display of well-developed male flesh. There is a lack of that at our nunnery, as the monks of MIT do not visit as often as Mother Superior KBott promised.

The Twihaters, on the other hand, believe their status as Wellesley women means they have Values and Standards. Their progressive philosophy, saturated in holy devotion to Feminism and Success, means they evaluate their choices critically. Notwithstanding Jon Stewart's sexism, the Twihaters despise Bella's vacuous stares and Edward's stalkerish tendencies. The writing is horrible, they point out, the fans annoy the educated world and the author is a Mormon.

In the history of the Church and the cloistered community, the phrase in the world but not of the world comes to mind. As the Christians struggled and struggle to understand how their beliefs implicated their behavior in a non-Christian world, so do the nuns of Wellesley struggle.

How do women who believe in strength, success and ambition watch movies? Do they turn off the TV in disgust at gender stereotypes and the upholding of feminine weakness? Or, like the Medievalist, do they vacillate between opinions and venture to see New Moon on opening night because they can't remember the last time they saw a man?

I ponder.*

*In the Convent, we do not come to Conclusions. We ask questions, discuss, debate, disagree, and then walk to the ville for coffee.

The Sexy Demon

The Sisters at this Convent are holy indeed. None are admitted to Wellesley College save those who dedicate their lives to God, known outside the Convent as Success. Success, in Her diverse forms, is the end of all our means and the divinity to whom we profess loyalty.

However.

Success has often warned us about idols -- lesser beings that command our attention away from Her almighty presence. These idols, which will be further detailed in later posts, include Romantic Relationships, Shopping, Having Fun, Partying, and Trying New Things.

(The Medievalist pauses to confess that Wellesley sisters pursue all these idols, despite their holiness. They luxuriate in the sins of a good Friday night and pay homage to a myriad group of indulgences. I also comment that it seems, occasionally, that the Superiors encourage these sins. However, I judge not lest I be judged for enjoying Cambridge Square at dusk.)

The GRAND idol remains, first and foremost in the Sisters' minds, Sleep. Sleep beckons with a seductive figure, a devil who takes the form of the most attractive sex (shifting from sister to sister), and strip-teases upon pillows made of down and Tempur-Pedic.

Sleep wins over most of the Sisters during their stay at the Convent. Some Sisters acknowledge their sin openly, who confess to the Medievalist that they slept fifteen hours a day their freshman year.

Others believe that Sleep is the Breakfast of Losers, and crow at their three o'clock bedtimes and five o'clock alarms. Sleep rules our lives in a contradictory manner, a sinful anti-logic. Sleep does not commune with the angel Health - instead, Sleep has a mind of its own.

Even the Medievalist struggles with this demon. In fact, I cannot be happy in my convent stay without a solid eight hours. When I receive less, I proceed to complain loudly to the rest of the Sisters about what five hours of sleep does to one's wimple.

Marathon Prayer to TV Saints

Once upon a time, the Christian church venerated the holy people in their midst. This veneration began as an informal respect, later to a formal appreciation, and eventually to a quasi-cult system where Saint Genevieve was worshipped for her refusal to sacrifice the precious flower to an invader and medieval thieves could pray to their very own Saint Nick.

The saints never achieved divinity, of course, but they appropriated a sense of help. The saints were your nurses, your Apple Geniuses, your State Farm agent: in your neighborhood to help you with the Big things in life.

At The Convent in Massachusetts, we also worship our saints. We have many of them -- some who are Departed Sisters*-- but also those whom we have never met. Like medieval saints, they are removed from our experience of reality and yet influence them.

The most popular saints at The Convent are Dr. Temperance Brennan, Dr. Meredith Gray, Doctor Who (a more remote saint, whose cult is therefore more respected for its foreign origins), occasionally Don Draper, Rory Gilmore, Michael Scott (the patron saint of lunatic employers) and the entire cast of every Korean drama ever produced.

These holy men and women provide aid to the Sisters of Wellesley. They relieve the need to process, analyze, deconstruct and fail to reconstruct Reality. These TV saints protect Wellesley sisters from believing that everyone knows where James Joyce lived after the age of 22. They remind us that romantic relationships are valuable despite their lack of resume appeal.

They remind the straight Sisters that men exist, and that some of those men are attractive. And these televised sages remind Wellesley Sisters that the Sisters are smart, and that one day they shall achieve union with Success; for if we worship in the cult of Bones, we too can be successful forensic anthropologists with David Boreneaz as our luscious partner.

The Medievalist must confess that there is a surprising aspect to the Wellesley cults. There is a fervent dedication that I myself have succumbed to: the radical forms of worship. It is not uncommon, and even I dare say expected, for most Sisters to spent one week per semester in prayer to these Saints. These televised marathons take place in the quiet solitude of the cell, where the Sister may pray to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and learn the miracles by heart (seasons 1-3, at least.)

I would continue this deliberation, but even in my summery separation from the Convent, I still dedicate myself to the patron saints, Evan R. Lawson and Jane Marple, to whom I owe adoration.

Later Note: The Medievalist failed in her worship of Jane Marple, as she claimed higher allegiance to Sleep, the rival god to Success. Success will hopefully not harm her; Jane Marple, on the other hand, might.

*Departed Sisters: sisters who have left This Life to enter Life with Success. Notable Sisters of this convent are those known to all, such as Nora Ephron, Madeleine Albright, Madeleine Albright's current successor, Diane Sawyer, and so on.

Davis Scholars, the Wonder Breads

Davis Scholars are the Wonder Bread that Nia Vardalos always wished she had; they are our magic deep-fried henna zit cream, our Left Eyebrow Relic of the other St. John, our Older Sisters.

When first arriving to Wellesley, the first-year entering the Novitiate gather in the Church of Western Pluralism* and worship at the altar of Success. After singing the hymns to hard work and fame, the Mother Superior or Director of the Novitiate does a roll call of all the sisters present.

The group that surprises most first-years are the Davis Scholars, a small group of older women who cheer the way they did back in "Grease": without shame. Most average first-years are insulted by the presence of these older women. The Older Sisters, entering late into life, have forgone the trials and tribulations that so define the First Year Sister experience.

These trials include said acne, nonexistent budgets, beer binges, living in a room with a Fanatic, calling home more often than you called your first boyfriend, and being Young and Restless without ever having seen a soap opera.

Despite the annoyance of the First Years, they soon learn that the Davis Scholars/Older Sisters are a Blessing sent from God/Success. They are a reminder of Normal Life in a convent that defies Normality and embraces the asceticism of People Who Work Their Asses Off. The Older Sisters have lived their lives as wedding photographers, successful businesswomen, teen mothers. They have embraced Normal Life and decided to complete themselves with a Wellesley degree.

Marie de France wrote an interesting protofeminist Lai called Eliduc. All the principal characters end up in gender-appropriate single-sex religious safehouses; both the Madonna and the whore. This reflected a general ideal for our medieval women: you lived your life, then you finished it in a convent so that you could make your peace with God.

Davis Scholars have Lived, and then entered The Convent. The rest of us entered the Beloved Convent, and...

*More on the Church of Western Pluralism later, if the Medievalist can dare to distinguish between the branches of East and West Pluralism without offending Easterners, Westerners, or those who prefer not to declare their geographical orientation.

A New Kind of Nunsense

For the record, I am not a nun.

I am not a nun now, nor am I a Davis Scholar* who was formerly a nun, nor do I have plans to enter a sisterhood any time in the future. I am not, for that matter, Roman Catholic.

I am, however, a student at Wellesley College, which is the modern day equivalent of a convent.

Wellesley is that school you may have heard about if you read the New York Times enough. Check the Secretaries of State roster; check out a few Julia Roberts movies; watch any diehard woman anchor on any news channel and chances are, she's an alumna. Wellesley is one of those schools, elite and proud of it, but we are also a women's school, so we get to feel like outsiders.

The best of both worlds, in fact, because some of us still like Miley Cyrus.

And on this blog, as in real life, I find the best way to explain Wellesley as a convent. We are not defined by the absence of men but the curious eccentricities of all-female community.

In a post-Enlightenment twist, we don't serve an omnipotent, all-loving Christian God; we serve the omnipotent, all-hating Success. In a post-Foucault twist, Success allows us to define Her whatever way we want to define Her.

For most of us at Wellesley, Success defines herself in Fortune 500 and non-wedding mentions in the New York Times. You don't make the Times, you don't make the cut. Get on your knees and start repenting for your waste of the $200,000 education and the best profs on the planet. The Hail Marys are heard in the Science Center between the hours of 2AM and 5AM.

Most people think nuns in the medieval era were chaste. They were supposed to be, of course, celibacy vows and all that. Yet Boccaccio, the delightful spinner of the Decameron, delighted in scandalous tales of nuns gone wild. The theme continues to present day, when one cannot search for "free nun pictures" on Google Images without going bug-eyed and losing any innocence one's Disney gave one. Wellesley girls... well, everybody thinks they have the Wellesley love life pretty well figured out.

Life at Wellesley, in sum, is crazy and complicated. We try to create paradigms for our experience -- it's like living in the army, it's like living in a boarding school, it's like living in the White House when Geena Davis is president-- but I'm sticking to mine. Stick around with me and see what kind of nunsense this really is.

* Davis Scholars: moms and grandmothers who give up interesting careers like wedding photography to study brain surgery and keep the rest of our brains intact by placing hands on shoulders and baking cookies. The cookies are for those who mourn the AVI Fresh refusal to bake anything resembling a North American Cookie cookicus. Davis Scholars are also the only students who believe in Normal Life.