So what do you really do in your first year at college, anyway?

Like many things at Bennington, the answer to this question can't be found in a fourfold cluster of multiple-choice responses. It's a question you live and an answer you discover. In this story, Jennifer Stanley of North Reading, MA, shares what she did her first year at Bennington—how she lived their questions and discovered her answers.

Stanley was sitting at the End of the World when she was seized by a question.

The End of the World is the far edge of Bennington's Commons Lawn—a prime spot for thinking, picnicking, and taking in the splendor of Vermont's Green Mountains. At the moment, Stanley was doing all three. It was her first day at college, and she and several other new students were eating lunch with their peer mentor. "I was taken aback by the beauty of the view," Stanley says. "I was afraid that one day I would take it for granted." So she asked the older student:

"Does this ever get old?"

It was a fitting first question for a year that took shape around a particular truth: the power of exploring familiar loves with fresh eyes.

Stanley readily admits that she didn't plan it that way. "I came to Bennington thinking I was just going to do acting, so I took a lot of performance courses my first term. People had always told me, 'If you want to pursue acting, you have to give yourself to it 100%,' and I was afraid to branch out and do other things.

"One of the courses I took in my first term was called Music as an Instrument for Social Change. I became really interested in that idea: How can the arts be a force for equality? How do different cultures use the arts to interact with each other? We watched a documentary about South Africa, how the music of the Zulu people actually caused a peaceful spark for change. Even before the government changed, it gave people hope."

Taking her cues from those ideas, Stanley sought out her freshman year Field Work Term internship at an inner-city school in Portland, Maine, attended mostly by children of immigrant families. Stanley worked with the kids to create a musical theater production that combined their cultural traditions. "These kids don't have much support at home. Some of them were stricken with learning disabilities and other challenges. And yet they memorized everything. They sang these beautiful songs, performed a dance from the Sudan, created scenery from their own artwork. They were amazing."

That spring term, Stanley returned to campus inspired--and more than a little unsettled. "For the first time in five years, I wasn't 100% sure about where my education was going." Even so, she forged ahead with a lineup of classes that combined drama and voice technique with psychology and literature.

Things began to click. In Developmental Psychology, she became fascinated by the effect of family and social situations on human development. In Dramatic Literature: Reading Ibsen, Shaw, and O'Neill, she began to realize that the plays she was reading, written a century ago, were not only stirring works in themselves; they had also helped launch social movements.

Conversations with Dina Janis--who taught Drama Forum Readers' Theatre, a group tutorial Stanley was taking--helped Stanley clarify where her interests converged. "Dina is the first acting teacher I've ever had who really encouraged exploring other things. And she was also the first person who'd ever presented this idea to me that as actors, we should be contributing to the work of the playwright and what the play means as a whole.

"Talking with her helped me articulate what the love of theater was all about for me. I realized that while I love acting, I actually don't love performing. But I love the work behind it. I love studying the relationships between people.

"Nobody had ever pushed playwriting with me before, but more and more, it became what I wanted to do. I was reading this book on Rwanda and realized that one person writing that book probably changed the way thousands of people saw the world. What if I could write something that changed someone's mind like that?"

As for that question Stanley asked her peer mentor about the view at the End of the World--"Does this ever get old?"--she was relieved to hear that the answer was no. In time, she learned it for herself. "It's true. It's always beautiful. When I wake up to go to the gym in the morning, I still have to stop and watch the mist coming up over the mountain."

Next term, Stanley will continue to explore theatre from her new vantage point as a playwright. In the meantime, she's gotten a head start, spending her free hours writing a play.

"It's been a trip, because I started out with one idea, and the characters have taken on a life of their own. You think the play's about one thing, and then you find out it might be about something else entirely."

Classes Jennifer Took in her First Year:

Fall Term:

• Intermediate Voice, with Rachel Rosales
• Shakespeare: The Tragedies, with Steven Bach
• The Actor's Instrument, with Dina Janis
• Music as an Instrument for Social Change, with Bruce Williamson
• First-Year Dance Intensive, with Terry Creach

Field Work Term:

• The Cathedral School, Portland, ME

Spring Term:

• Group Tutorial: Drama Forum Readers' Theatre, with Dina Janis
• Mixed Choir, with Mary Montgomery
• Vocal Technique: Jazz Standards, with Jay Clayton
• Intermediate Voice, with Rachel Rosales
• Developmental Psychology: After the Grand Theories, with David Anderegg
• The Actor's Technique: Nuts and Bolts, with Dina Janis and Jenny Rohn
• Dramatic Literature: Reading Ibsen, Shaw, and O'Neill, with Steven Bach