As part of Bennington's Admitted Students Weekend on April 8-9, literature faculty member Rebecca Godwin moderated a panel of current students, who spoke about their experiences and what they've learned in the process of creating their college education at Bennington. Aarti Rana '06, Ava Heller '07, Roger Gordon '07, Ryan Smith '08, Dorothy Allen '09, and Reid Ginoza '09.

Aarti: I came to Bennington because I wanted to study literature and math side by side, and there weren't many institutions that were excited by that. Bennington really was. At first, it was like being in a hot air balloon, looking down on patterns or regions on the ground--literature over here, math over there--and I was interested in them, but had no idea what they were actually about. In high school, you don't always get to study what literature really is. So it was a process of coming down and getting closer and closer to disciplines. After a while I realized I do love math, but I love it because of its metaphors, and I can read books and put that in my literature anyway; so I ended up focusing more on literature and social sciences. Bennington challenges me to constantly ask myself, "Why am I interested in this thing? What does it give me? What do I really mean when I say I want to study this subject?"? It gives you the opportunity to consider how what you're doing might be changing your life. And that's what's so cool about it. It's like starting a sentence and not knowing the end of it.

Roger: I transferred here from a large university of 36,000 students. At the university, I kind of felt lost. Every class I took was chosen for me, and I had no freedom to do what I wanted to do. To make a long story short, I found Bennington, and looked through the curriculum. Realizing things weren't chosen for me was wonderful. I still needed to have a focus, so I came here and studied both playwriting and computer science, and it was great to have the freedom to do that.

Ava: I came to Bennington to study dance and pre-physical therapy courses. I had put myself on this very strict track, and was already researching graduate school as a sophomore. I stayed on that for a pretty long time and found myself being pulled in so many different directions--I was taking dance, and science, and one literature course a semester, and social science, and so I wasn't getting into advanced work in any of those areas. It was getting to this point where I felt like I was enriching myself and learning a lot, but I wasn't doing what I came here to study--which is to become a dancer, to learn to create movement. My Field Work Terms and the advice of my Plan Committee eventually helped me realize that this is the time for me to be a student, to learn all I can, and I don't need to decide my entire life right now. My advisor, Jason Zimba, is a physics professor, and he said, "You're at the point where you should be diving into advanced work. I would like you to take as much dance, composition, and literature about dance that you can, so you can really focus and understand." To have my Plan Committee say it was okay to concentrate on one thing was something I really needed. They've been a centering force for me.

Ryan: I haven't had a Plan meeting yet, but the Plan itself has been an exploration. The Plan is your process--it's not your goal, not the end product, but it's the process to get to what you're doing. My goal when I came here was to study pre-medicine, and yet I'm finding I can get so much more out of this school through a broader exploration. I'm finally starting to realize all the different supplementary ways I can help in that field if I do take other courses. For example, I'm taking Spanish classes because that's an up-and-coming language in this country, and also I absolutely love it. So it's great that I can see these connections and then actually go for it. That's the point of this navigation, and it's a little winding, but sometimes that's the way to go.

Dorothy: Like Reid, I came from a big public high school, where they would say, "This is what you have to do", and that was it. I was so ready for Bennington, and I came here and just wanted to study everything. I spent hours reading the curriculum and wanting to take all those classes. What I really wanted to do is study literature and biology and visual arts, because they all make sense together to me. In high school, I was the kid who was drawing her biology notes, writing poems from her science classes, and that was really important to me. When I got here, I took an anatomy/dance class, a printmaking class, and all these things started feeding into each other--I was doing prints of bones and writing poems for my evolution class--and I think that's why I completely fell in love with Bennington. At first I couldn't believe it--is there really a place that's going to let me do this? Because I don't think of them as disciplines anymore, but rather as the things that I love to do.

Reid: I'm from Hawaii, and sometimes people ask me what brought me here. It always comes down to the Plan Process. I went to a public high school, and I would do the work, but I felt like I wasn't getting anything out of it. But when I came across Bennington and the Plan, I noticed the hourglass shape that was described and realized that was great for me, because I had no idea what I wanted to study. I visited other colleges where they were already asking me, "What's your major?" And I'm saying, "I guess I'll put down biomedical engineering?even though I have no idea what that is?." At one school, I was taken to the chair of the biochemistry department, who handed me a ten-page packet with all the requirements and every single class I'd be taking for the next four years.

When I came to Bennington, I met with my faculty advisor, Allen Shawn, who's a music composition teacher. He said, "It sounds like you really want to explore. You don't have to settle on chemistry or biology." So I took math, computer science, philosophy, composition, and a South African issues class. At first I was engaged with them separately--I had my computer science questions, my philosophy questions, but they weren't related yet. Teachers here are very accessible, so I started talking to each of my teachers at least once every two weeks; they all have office hours and you can also schedule appointments.

I've also talked to people who aren't necessarily teachers but who are guiding figures for me--[Director of Admissions] Ken Himmelman, [College president] Liz Coleman, our Dean and Provost Elissa Tenny. In a conversation with Ken, we started talking about the disconnection I was feeling between all my classes. We looked at all the projects I'd chosen to do for those classes--the microprocessor I built in Dickinson [Science Building], for instance--and we realized that I was constantly in search of a pattern or a structure that emerged from within, like the structure of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, the pattern of the participants, or the structure of the microprocessor, how those electric patterns combine and evolve into this computer programming. And that's kind of why I came to Bennington. I didn't realize this specific thing was going to happen, but as far as I can tell, this is the best place for it to happen.

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