When members of the Beloit College class of 2012 moved into their new campus digs in August, they brought along the requisite creature comforts: the cell phones, the MP3 players, a poster or two.
But observing their cargo on move-in day also yielded a few surprises, like when a unicycle suddenly appeared, or when a faded stuffed-toy peeked out of a laundry basket, or when a massive pack of cheese-ball cartons was unearthed from a box and began taking up inordinate space in a smallish room. As the fall 2008 semester got underway, we went beyond the backpacks and the flip-flops to talk with a group of students about some of the significant objects they brought with them to campus.
Molly Steigerwald
Hometown: Rutland, Vermont
Brought with her: An ornate tapestry purchased in India
| Greg Anderson |
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| Molly Steigerwald purchased her Rajasthani-style tapestry during an arts festival in the Kutch Desert in India. A tad smaller than a single bed, it took an artisan a year and a half to complete. |
The 10 months Molly Steigerwald spent living in India after high school profoundly affected every aspect of her life. So it makes sense that she positioned the richly colored, embroidered tapestry she bought in the Kutch Desert to be the first thing she sees every morning. With the assistance of duct tape and a couple of hooks, it hangs directly over her bed in her room in Whitney Hall.
“It’s one of the most beautiful things I brought back from India and going there was a humongous part of my life,” she says.
Truth be told, Steigerwald not only grew as a person while living in India, she also found Beloit College.
Not quite ready to rush off to college after high school, she had applied for a Rotary Scholarship with the goal of residing in a country as vastly different from home as possible. She wanted to gain confidence, exercise her independence, and expand her awareness of the world.
Only two weeks before boarding a plane bound for Mumbai, she and her father made a road trip from their home in Rutland, Vt., to the University of Texas-Austin. If all went according to plan, she would be enrolling there when she returned to the United States.
But during her time in India, she met another exchange student whose sibling had gone to Beloit. Intrigued by what she heard, Steigerwald checked out Beloit on the Web, and liked what she found. “Beloit seemed like an accepting place where you can try new things, and people are supportive of that,” she says. “It’s full of interesting people who have cool stories about what they’ve done and who come from very close and far away.”
When asked about her affinity for India, Steigerwald sighs ever so lightly, a nod to the inadequacy of words. But when she talks about riding a camel in the desert, meeting an endless string of kind and engaging Indian people, sampling a special dessert at a festival when the moon was positioned just so, or studying classical Indian dance to the point of discovering a broader interest in dance, you begin to get the picture.
When she returned to the States, she enrolled at Beloit, even signing up for an Arabic class last summer through the College’s Center for Language Studies program.
Now settling into her first official semester, Steigerwald is fully engaged in her classes and excited about dancing, singing in the College’s Masterwork Chorus, and participating in Ceramics Club.
When she retreats to her room—which she coincidentally shares with a roommate named India—she can gaze at her tapestry, its tiny stitched-in mirrors reflecting the light, reminding her of a place she loves.
When Steigerwald looks closely, she can even see herself in it.
Steven Jackson
Hometown: Yachats, Oregon
Brought with him: A melodica
| Greg Anderson |
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| Steven Jackson’s melodica was his companion on a long trek from the Pacific Northwest to Beloit. |
Steven Jackson was carrying something unusual as he made an intentionally long and circuitous train trip to Beloit last summer from Yachats, Ore., his small coastal hometown.
Part instrument, part oddity, it was a melodica, a handheld keyboard with a mouthpiece. It sounds kind of like an accordion or a cross between a harmonica and an accordion.
He took about a month to complete the journey, wending his way from the Pacific Northwest to San Francisco, then to Ventura County, Calif., and on to the Midwest. Whenever he could, he stopped to play music with people, the small, mobile instrument serving as the perfect medium for making spontaneous music.
Jackson got ahold of the instrument through his brother, who he’s played music with for as long as he can remember.
He says he just warmed up to it when he saw it, even though it cost him $50, which he points out is a lot, “considering it looks like a kid’s toy.”
During his first week on campus, Jackson jammed on his melodica with students he met at The Wall, a popular outdoor gathering place between Blaisdell and Whitney Halls. “It’s a great party instrument,” he says.
But Jackson does not truly consider himself a melodica player. He poses the question: “Does anyone?” Instead, he says he keeps the thing around just for fun. And it came in handy while he waited for his bass guitar to be shipped to campus.
These days, Jackson plays serious music as a bassist for the Beloit College Jazz Ensemble.
He also plays piano and recently formed a campus band with several other students.
In the spirit of his wide-ranging musical interests, which run from jazz to funk to old rhythm and blues and a lot of places in between, Jackson wants to sample widely from the academic offerings at Beloit.
Jackson found his way to Beloit during his senior year in high school, when he attended a college fair in Oregon and met Jim Zielinski, Beloit’s director of admissions.
Even while surrounded by a large group at Beloit’s booth, Zielinski seemed to be speaking directly to Jackson as he outlined some of the reasons to come to Beloit.
Especially appealing to Jackson was the music department, the College’s intimate size, the chance to dabble in and discover new things, and the fact that writing is featured prominently across the academic landscape.
Though he’s noncommittal about a major at this point, Jackson is considering music and political science as possibilities. He also has an interest in a minor in journalism and wants to get involved in the technical side of theatre and performance. He recently auditioned and won a spot with Voodoo Barbie, Beloit’s vaunted late-night comedy improv troupe, which only had two openings this year.
Beloit was Jackson’s first choice among the colleges he considered. When he found out he qualified for a Presidential Scholarship, Beloit’s most generous academic scholarship, he says everything just fell into place. “I felt like there was a good match here,” he says.
Now that classes are in full swing, Jackson’s melodica spends more time on the shelf next to his bed. He chuckles as he mentions the idea that he might write a special part into a song for the unusual instrument. “Maybe it will make a re-appearance at Beloit,” he says of the melodica with an introspective smile.
Faith Jones
Hometown: Elburn, Ill.
Brought with her: Guitar Hero game, an abundance of clothing, and a large furry pillow
| Greg Anderson |
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| When Faith Jones unloaded her dad’s truck upon arrival at Beloit, she produced her favorite purple pillow among other things. |
A joyful noise coming from Maurer Hall could be Faith Jones discovering her inner rock star.
“I’m addicted to Guitar Hero,” the first-year student from Elburn, Ill., says with a definitive nod and a smile. So of course Jones packed the popular video game as she prepared to move to campus.
Guitar Hero consists of a wireless, handheld guitar and a video screen that allows aspiring guitarists the chance to play along with the likes of Aerosmith and other bands. Players push color-coded buttons on a three-dimensional plastic guitar as they follow along with colors on the screen.
In so many ways, the game fits Jones’ playful spirit. She’s also crazy about playing nearly all sports, from football to Frisbee, but her strong suit is definitely basketball. These days, she’s practicing in earnest for the Buccaneer women’s basketball team.
Jones says she arrived on campus last August with “the usual stuff,” but she admits over-packing, and estimates that she brought enough clothes and shoes for about eight people.
And then there’s the lavender, furry pillow, which consumed a good deal of the space in her dad’s truck on the way to Beloit from her home in Elburn, Ill.
This fluffy, time-worn backrest pillow is the kind that invites you to lean up against it while reading. It has arms you can settle into, a stout back, and even a matching, furry handle. Jones is not exactly sure, but she thinks she’s had it since she was about 10.
“It’s my favorite thing,” Jones says, whose room at home was furnished in purple.
Jones confides that she wasn’t always excited about coming to Beloit. Coach Don Adams saw her play basketball for Rosary High School in Aurora, Ill., and started working hard to recruit her. She visited campus but didn’t exactly warm up to it the first time. Later, she stayed at Beloit through the summer WiscAMP program. The Wisconsin Alliance for Minority Participation operates programs on select campuses across the state with the aim of increasing numbers of underrepresented minorities holding bachelor’s degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Jones says she plans to major in biochemistry.
She recalls visiting other colleges, then returning to Beloit. The second time, she came away impressed by the new Center for the Sciences and the conversations she had with people, including a long and engaging talk with former men’s basketball coach, Cecil Youngblood, now associate dean and director of the Intercultural Center.
The youngest of four kids and the only girl in the family, Jones describes her pre-Beloit life as sheltered. She resided in a small town and attended Catholic schools. After spending four years at an all-girls high school, she’s still taken aback when she hears a guy’s voice in her classes at Beloit.
At first, adjusting to college life was not as easy as she thought it would be. A self-described daddy’s girl, Jones missed home, and especially her dad. For the first few weeks of the semester, he would drive all the way to Beloit from Illinois on his day off, so the two could play noon basketball with a group of campus regulars. By mid-September, he had stopped coming, but Jones says that’s OK.
“Now I’m starting to feel good about being independent,” she says.
Dana Wierzbicki
Hometown: Niles, Ill.
Brought with her: An Optimus Prime Transformer Helmet
| Greg Anderson |
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| Dana Wierzbicki’s plastic transformer helmet turns a human voice into one that sounds like a robot. So far, it’s been a big hit in Aldrich Hall. |
Dana Wierzbicki is a wisp of a woman who speaks with a soft voice, but when she wears her Optimus Prime voice-changing helmet, she sounds mighty.
“You have to experience it,” she giggles, as she explains how a 4-year-old child she babysat would say everything in a “huge robot voice” when he donned the transforming helmet, a favorite toy.
Optimus is a character, leader of the Autobots actually, in the world of Transformers comics and animated movies. The helmet offers a limited repertoire of statements from the character, or it allows wearers to say anything they want and sound robotic.
“Even the most normal sentences become hilarious under the helmet,” Wierzbicki says.
Before coming to Beloit from Niles (Ill.) West High School, Wierzbicki stopped at Target to pick up a helmet for herself, figuring her new Beloit friends would enjoy it as much as she had. And indeed they have. Wierzbicki reports that some friends have worn the helmet while dancing a jig and singing a Scottish ballad that came out in robot-speak.
The helmet also has been up and down the hallways of Aldrich Hall on a variety of heads and even made it all the way from her room to The Wall, a popular campus gathering place at the southern edge of Chapin Quad.
When not channeling robots, or offering others the chance to, Wierzbicki thinks about possibly majoring in psychology. She says she wants to sample as many courses and activities as she can before she makes any definite decisions.
The helmet may have served her as an ice-breaker of sorts, but it’s not that Wierzbicki seems to have needed that. At a recent activities fair on campus, she showed her willingness to get out there and try new things when she signed up for all sorts of clubs, new and old, including Activists United and Alliance.
Wierzbicki first heard about Beloit when her aunt recommended it. An overview in the Princeton Review also factored into her decision, as did Beloit’s ineffable quality of weirdness within the student body, which Wierzbicki mentions with an obvious reverence for the weird. When it was all said and done, Beloit just felt like a great fit when she visited campus.
An only child, she already grasps the trade-offs involved in communal campus digs versus a room of her own at home.
In fact, she may be sharing a shower that is “painted so red it reminds me of Applebees,” but her friends are nearby day and night. And she may not have a car to run around in according to whim, but she recognizes that there are still many things to do, and they’re all within walking distance.
“I like how everyone here is really friendly, and I can get to know lots of people,” she says. “Some of my high school friends say they eat alone a lot at college, but I haven’t had that experience at all.”
Canberk Dayan
Hometown: Istanbul, by way of Addana and Izmir, Turkey
Brought with him: An acoustic guitar
| Greg Anderson |
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| Expecting Canberk Dayan to come to Beloit without his guitar would have been a little like asking him to go without air or water. He carried it with him halfway around the world. |
Canberk (pronounced Johnbeck) Dayan rarely goes anywhere without his acoustic guitar, so of course he brought it with him to Beloit, even though he was traveling all the way from his home in Istanbul, Turkey.
Dayan had his first taste of the musical stage in the second grade, when he was invited to play the Turkish national anthem on piano in a traditional ceremony signaling the opening of the school year.
When he was told his hands were too small to learn the guitar, he took mandolin lessons instead, then moved to guitar.
He was drawn to the music of the American band Metallica, especially the challenging acoustic guitar parts in the band’s song “Nothing Else Matters.”
He guesses he’s played that song a thousand times, but he still likes to work toward perfecting it. He takes the same approach with his academic plans: He sets his goals high and stays focused on achieving them.
While a high school exchange student in Rochester, N.Y., his first time in the United States, he visited Cornell and Columbia Universities and dreamed of studying engineering at one of the two schools. Knowing it would be tough to get a scholarship as a first-year international student, he decided instead to consider a 3/2 engineering program, the kind that would allow him to study in a liberal arts setting for three years, then transfer to a school with an engineering program.
Beloit was among the top schools with 3/2 programs on a list his high school counselor showed him. Dayan came to Beloit with the goal of applying for scholarships and admittance to Columbia’s industrial engineering program after three years.
He cites his father, a mechanical engineer, as his inspiration. “He is the hardest working person I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says, “and he’s really eager and dedicated to his work. He loves what he’s doing.”
If the first weeks of school are any indication, Dayan is also a diligent worker and a budding leader. The president of International Club, he is also launching a table tennis club that he hopes will be good enough to compete with other schools. His plans include getting involved in Beloit’s music programs and learning to sing a cappella.
While he admits it’s an adjustment coming from a major urban area of millions to a city the size of Beloit, Dayan says that so far, he really likes the people. “This is a place where you can be who you really are,” he says.
He pulls his guitar out of its case and begins plucking the opening notes of “Nothing Else Matters” from memory.
Then he begins to sing in a lovely voice:
“So close, no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
and nothing else matters …”
