This clearly means we are not just able to play in the snow, we are duty-bound to do so. I believe there is an ordinance somewhere in the Portland legal code to that effect.
Unfortunately, that is also where the curse arises, particularly in this time of midterms and deadlines. The irresistible, primal urge for Portlanders to cavort in snow—even just a few inches’ worth—cancels out the possible benefits of a school cancellation or delay.
If class is cancelled and we haven’t completed all our work for that class, it follows that the work should be done. If class is cancelled the day before a midterm (as it was for me last week), then the logical thing to do is to spend the newly created free time to study harder, trying desperately to ignore the snow falling outside.
But such resistance to the powers of snow is futile, unless you are one of those wondrous people who somehow feel unexcited by winter, or if you are from Minnesota or some other region with plenty of snow. In the latter case, though, you may feel obligated to go outside, too, if only to remind your fellow frolickers that our perception of “a lot of snow” is thoroughly skewed.
And if you are one of those people who simply does not feel the childlike pull of the wonderland that we saw around Palatine Hill last week—if you would replace the world “childlike” with “childish”—then you must be much more mature than me, or many of my friends, and I’m not sure I would like to be as stoic as you are.
So yes, I was drawn by the sirens of the “snowstorm” we had last Thursday. I am even worse off, because I did not awake to the sights of snow like everyone who lives up here on the Hill. I was lured from Sellwood—where there was only rain, as there was in most of Portland—by an excited call from a friend. And I had full power to resist, as well as many excuses in reserve to bring to my aid.
I could have argued that the roads were probably too slick, or that I should really work on my thesis. Such arguments would have been valid, and then I would never have seen the snow, and might have finished some work.
I did consider such excuses. Really. But the power of that snow was just too strong, and I am certain it possessed my friend to call me and trap me in its awesome grip. Okay, maybe not. But within thirty minutes I was on Lower Campus, playing football with friends on the semi-soft snow, running and throwing snowballs, and thrashing about like a kid in, well, wintertime. I was purposefully ignoring the piles of work still waiting to be addressed in favor of the simple pleasure of freedom.
The work caught up with me, of course, after the football game, the snowballs, and the subsequent hot chocolate and lentil soup. As I settled in at a library downtown that afternoon, I was struck by a tinge of guilt for having “wasted” so much of my day.
Yet early this week, as the sun returned and finished off the last remnants of the snowpeople built around campus, I truly missed that snow. Although I think the joy it gave me carried through the weekend—through a midterm at 8:00 am Friday morning and another ten pages of writing my thesis—I fear I should have utilized it some more. Perhaps I should have frozen some in my freezer, to take out sometime around finals, or perhaps I should have just played in it all day.
Yet I am mindful that miracles could still occur. In this week of Purim—a Jewish holiday in which a miracle is indeed celebrated, and to judge from the Purim party I went to last weekend, celebrated quite boisterously—let’s keep our hopes up for another miracle of snow.
Hey, with global climate change happening, anything’s possible, right? That might not be a true miracle, but it’ll do. Especially if it comes right after Spring Break. I anticipate I’ll be able to use a few extra days of vacation.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed, and our snowball-making skills honed. You never know when another out-of-season chill will blow in and you’ll need them again.
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en-year-old Matthew Decker constantly brags that he has seen the cultures of over twenty countries and been to numerous basketball games because of his mom’s work. Other kids wonder where his mom works; is she a high-ranking official in the United Nations? Or maybe she works for the Portland Trailblazers and they get free tickets to games? The answer is not expected. Matthew’s mom, Emily Decker, works for the Admissions office at Lewis & Clark College. Matthew gets to experience different cultures at the Annual Lewis and Cl
Emily Decker has three children, and she is far from the only parent at Lewis & Clark. As more and more young professors and staff arrive at LC, so do their children.
Working parents are nothing new, but college staff and professors with children are different from other working parents. With grading, researching, and a slew of other responsibilities, academic jobs take up a lot of time off-campus.
Every parent wants to spend as much time with his or her kids as possible, but it can be a challenge when the collegiate atmosphere demands so much. Professors and staff deal with this by rescheduling their work hours and involving their children in their work as much as possible.
While many parents are not able to take their kids to their work, LC professors and staff often bring their children into the college environment. “A college community is a neat environment to work in and to raise a family in,” said Decker.
Jerusha and Brian Detweiler-Bedell, psychology professors at LC, often have students over for dinner at their house and they say their two-year-old son, Rory, absolutely loves it.
Susan Glosser and Lyell Asher, both professors at LC, try to involve their four-year old daughter, Olivia, in college events as much as they can. This year, they plan on taking her along to the department potluck.
“Olivia thinks Lewis & Clark is just another playground,” said Glosser.
But sometimes these kids don’t get to see their parents as much as they would like to. Decker is often away, traveling to high schools in Hawaii and Minnesota on a regular basis and doing admissions interviews. When she has to go on trips or is at work all day long, she does not get to see Matthew.
“I can’t volunteer at my children’s schools or chaperone field trips like other moms,” said Decker.
The same holds true for other staff and professors at LC. It is difficult to balance work and family time. This is why many professors and staff have scheduled the hours that they work so that they can maximize the time they get to see their kids.
Decker cut back to working part time when she had her first child. Jerusha and Brian Detweiler-Bedell arrange their teaching schedule so that they each can spend one whole day of the week with Rory.
“We also don’t do any work all day Saturday. Saturday is the day we do family stuff,” said Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell.
Glosser and Asher have also cut back on their teaching hours. One of the advantages of being a employee of the college as compared to other working parents is the opportunity to change working hours.
“I didn’t have to choose whether to keep working [when I had a kid],” said Glosser. “Everyone should have a job this flexible.”
Professors and staff are also looking into establishing an on-campus daycare program. Several professors have attempted to start such a program in the past, but have not succeeded. Currently, many professors and staff at LC use a daycare service close to the campus or an at-home daycare program; however, they all agree that an on-campus daycare program would be wonderful.
“The college is a great environment and it would be even more ideal with daycare on-campus,” said Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell. She went on to suggest that on-campus daycare would provide a place for psychology students to study kids for their classes.
Furthermore, an on-campus daycare facility would allow non-psych LC students the chance to interact with kids, a demographic that is often missing from daily life on Palatine Hill.
Children of LC faculty and staff themselves could interact with students and eat lunch or go on walks with their parents. And Matthew could brag that he was going to hang out with the “big kids” even more often than he does now.
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Annie Megan Daniels (’06) would appear to be just another Lewis & Clark student, but she demonstrates that looks can be deceiving. One is unlikely to guess from looking at her that Daniels scored highly on the SATs at the age of 12, graduated from high school when she was fifteen, will graduate from LC at the age of 19 with two majors and one minor, and will go on to attend graduate school before the age of 20.
Another young star, Rowena Held (’07), is one of the seven distinguished Pamplin Scholars, skipped the second and eighth grades, came to college at the age of 15, and will graduate with a double major in Physics and Mathematics at the age of 19. Daniels and Held are two of a small group of students to come to LC at a very young age.
Although LC does keep separate records for younger and older students, Mike Sexton, Dean of Admissions, stated that in the 15 years that he has been at LC he can “count the number of exceptionally young students on one hand.” The admissions office does not treat their applications differently than the rest hof the student body; however, they do look into whether the student is a compelling candidate or just a precocious youngster bored with high school.
In response, these students make compelling arguments. Daniels, from Bloomberg, Texas came from a town of 300 and had a graduating class of 16. Her sophomore year, she realized that she was wasting her time with a non-college-preparatory high school. She quickly discovered that, by enroling in community college courses, she could earn credits twice as quicky. Doing so, she blazed past high school and began applying to colleges.
The first college to respond to her rejected her because of her age. Undeterred, she sent a college counselor’s recommendation to LC, which Sexton recommends for proper evaluation.
Due in part to a specialized primary school program, Held had no difficulties graduating early and getting into college. Besides skipping two grades, Held attended a Magnet school, which allowed her to focus her education. This provided Held an opportunity to specialize her curriculum with a science focus. Due to this program Held had no difficulties graduating early and getting into college.
Both Daniels and Held said that they made the best decision by coming to LC at a young age. Held said, “I actually feel academically challenged and have a chance to use my abilities and aptitudes.” Daniels and Held both agree that they will have more years in life to find out what they want to do professional at get good at it. However, they have both experienced a few setbacks.
Daniels met with two major disadvantages: first, barriers to romance caused by Oregon’s strict statutory rape laws. At the age of sixteen, she said, minor status drove away most college boys. Second was the expectation by those around her that she would struggle in the academic program.
Held said, “I can’t participate in any of the psych studies or enter for their cool prizes, I don’t have my driver’s license, I have to fax my parents some official government forms for them to sign and I can’t buy lighters.”
Sandi Bottemiller, Director of Residential Services, says that Residence Life does not deny these students access to on-campus living and does not treat them differently than other students. Bottemiller doesn’t recall any really big problems and has received no phone calls from parents with concerns.
However, Dianna Weiner, a LC alumni who was a part of LC’s Residence Life, notes that students who come to college at such a young age can experience many difficulties. Weiner found that young students usually have strong support structures driving their success, but when that disappears, problems arise. She remembers one student who had to withdraw because she was not socially and academically ready. Specifically, this student had gone along with her parents’ ambitions, but felt that she had missed out on her childhood.
However, Weiner noted that overall it seemed like age was not a predictor of success. Instead, she credited whether the students had chosen the school they wanted to attend.
Although these students are rare, LC also offers an opportunity for high school students to attend classes and get college credit. The Templeton Scholar provides opportunities for gifted high school students from the greater Portland area to undertake advanced studies and prepare for college. So next time you are sitting in class, take a moment to find out about the students around you—there’s more to them than meets the eye.
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Gelato is my new best friend. About 20 to 30 hours of my week are now dedicated to scooping it, shoving it into cones and neon plastic dishes, shuffling it around in walk-in freezers, and getting the smell of it out of my hair.
I am not alone in this working world experience. According to a study done in 2002 by the State PIRG’s Higher Education Project, 74% of full-time students work while they are in school. Along with many other students at Lewis & Clark and across the country, I am now part of the student-with-a-part-time-job class.
We hustle to and from classes and then bustle to our foodservice jobs, internships, and various retail locations. We sacrifice our weekends to get a head start on our rent checks, groceries and heating bills, saving up for traveling and our looming college loans. We no longer merely feed off of the teat of our wealthy or upper middle class parents, we have now created our own money-making teat on which we can meagerly suckle ourselves.
When I realized that my junior year would be spent in Germany, I figured that my work-study paychecks from four hours a week in the mailroom weren’t going to cover all that beer. So I began scouring “craigslist” for a real job. After sending my resume to about 349 different coffee joints, candy stores, ice cream shops, and even a topless hostess gig, I eventually ended up at Mio Gelato in NE Portland.
One of the main problems with having a job is the commute to and from work, and this is the biggest reason that students living on-campus do not work off-campus. Katrina Light (‘05) holds both an on campus work-study job in the library, as well as an off campus “civilian” job at Bradley-Angle House, a feminist domestic violence shelter in NE Portland.
“I spend a lot of time commuting,” said Light who works 12-14 hours a week at the shelter. “I go to school in SW, live in SE and work in NE.”
But the biggest obstacle students face in having a job off-campus is keeping up with classes and managing a relatively social socia life. When I took my job, I knew I had other things on my plate—I am on the board at KLC, the photo editor for the Piolog, I grade papers for a teacher for work-study, and, last but not least, I actually have to go to school four days a week.
But I needed the money, so, like many others, I took the job. Virginia Houston (’07) works at Gino’s Restaurant in Sellwood, where she worked over the summer and recently started working again after returning from her fall trip to New York. When asked how she manages her time between work and school, she said, “I feel stressed all the time. I get everything done, though, and my time is hardly wasted. But I really have no time for leisure activities, which is a huge bummer.” Light added, “I can’t do school work at work so it definitely cuts into my academic productivity. Also, I work on the weekends, which cuts into any social life I once had.”
But despite the time challenges, I believe that we all do still have time to relax and maintain a social life, just on a smaller scale than those without jobs. I get my fair share of shopping in. I even went out on Friday night and dared to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers last night, despite my minimal free time. Light considers work “more satisfying” than her former LC social life, which I can completely agree with.
Serving gelato may not be as socially righteous as working at a domestic violence shelter, and weekends of smoking weed and watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force all night may have been awesome.
But having a job has not only helped me pay my bills, but also learn a lot more about Portland, make friends that haven’t slept with anyone at LC, and has gotten me a ton of free food. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much free gelato in my life. And that is certainly enough to rival any house party or bong rip.
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The students who walk the cobblestone paths of Lewis & Clark come from many different educational backgrounds. An apparent divide exists between those who attended public school and those who attended private school, but a smaller group of people have had another kind of education. They’re called Waldorf kids, and they share an unusual and interesting schooling experience.
Waldorf education is an international, independent movement based on the educational philosophy of Rudolph Steiner, an intellectual responsible for the spiritual science of anthroposophy. In 1907, Steiner wrote a book called The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy. Twelve years later, an official from the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company contacted him to create a curriculum for a school to serve the factory worker’s children. This is where Waldorf Education gets its name.
According to the Association of Waldorf Schools of America, what Steiner developed was a curriculum “based on a developmental approach that addresses the needs of the growing child and maturing adolescent. Waldorf teachers strive to transform education into an art that educates the whole child—the heart and the hands, as well as the head.”
Avery Welkin (‘09), an LC student from Bainbridge Island, WA, attended Olympia Waldorf School from kindergarten through eighth grade. His father worked at the school, and his parents “saw that it was a much better education overall than what most nearby public elementary schools had to offer.”
Welkin’s experience with the school illuminates some of the more striking differences between Waldorf and traditional schooling. For instance, he spent two years in kindergarten--a common practice in Waldorf schools. Also typically, he did not learn to read and write for an unusually long time. Instead, he played, learned poems, sang songs, learned handcrafts--knitting, for instance--and did art that was incorporated into many of the lessons. Each grade, said Welkin, had a “theme:” in second grade it was saints, in third grade it was the Old Testament, in fourth grade it was Norse mythology, in fith grade, it was Ancient Greece; and so on.
“I think Waldorf was really good for me through fifth grade,” said Welkin. Like many Waldorf schools, Welkin’s school only went through eighth grade. At that point, he enrolled in a public high school. Even if Olympia Waldorf School went through twelfth grade, however, Welkin said he would not have continued at the school because the Waldorf philosophy “ignores adolescence.”
Welkin also criticized Waldorf Education based on the lack of consistent and competent Waldorf-trained teachers, Waldorf’s Euro-centricity, and the use of Waldorf schools as an alternative route for “problem children” who would not function well in a traditional schooling environment.
Erika Merz (‘09), who attended Seattle Waldorf School up until eighth grade, was less critical than Welkin. “I think it worked pretty well for me,” she said of her experience. Merz’s parents heard about kindergarten at Waldorf, went to an open house where a puppet show was performed for the prospective parents, and “fell in love” with the philosophy.
Because she grew up within Waldorf, Merz says she “can’t see the big idea” of Steiner’s educational philosophy, but is keenly aware of how she is different from others. She cited her superior coordination skills, which she attributes to Waldorf’s focus on art, dance, and handcrafts. She also said she feels more able to connect positively with others than most, and attributes it to Waldorf’s focus on early social interaction.
Merz has experienced Waldorf’s failings up close. Her sister, frustrated by the slow pace of Waldorf education, left the school for two years to “catch up” and then returned. Her brother also became frustrated with the pace because he felt behind other kids on his athletic teams. Merz herself bemoaned Waldorf’s neglect of history, current events, scientific knowledge, and math.
She also complained that, because Waldorf students stay with one teacher for their entire schooling, the quality of education depends too much on that teacher’s skill. “It’s a good basic education, but at some point it can not quite be enough,” she said. “For some people, it works really well. And it works fine for me.”
Of the 4,800 applicants Lewis & Clark will get this year, Dean of Admissions Mike Sexton estimated that about 20-25 will be from Waldorf high schools. This number, of course, does not include students who, like Welkin and Merz, went to Waldorf schools only in years preceding high school. Sexton postulated that counselors at the handful of Waldorf high schools across the country have learned about LC’s Portfolio Path option, which might give Waldorf students a better read because of their atypical transcripts.
As for why Waldorf kids are attracted to LC, Sexton pointed out that Waldorf high schools are “more liberal-artsy than most.” Both Waldorf and LC, he said, stress languages, international studies, and art. Welkin surmised that the “emotionally stable, laid-back” people Waldorf schools tend to produce are attracted to LC’s similar vibe. He also noted that “…liberal arts is pretty similar to what Waldorfian roundedness philosophy is about.”
Whatever the reason for their attraction to this place, Waldorf kids are among us, a small but fascinating piece of the diverse puzzle that is the LC community.
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