Is College Bad for Girls?

Last week, I dreamed it again! THE COLLEGE DREAM. The one where there’s a class I haven’t been attending. I didn’t drop the class officially, and so I’m going to get an F on my transcript.This  was a double feature; add on my other college dream:  I think I have a term paper due, but I’m not really sure. And I don’t do squat about it. I worry but take no action.

I LOVED college! Why can’t I dream about my favorite professors?  The library?  (Yes, I liked the library.) Hanging my posters that first day back in the dorm after summer vacation? The Richard’s Wild Irish Rose we mixed with ginger ale? The parties? The crazy conversations?

Who knows. Cliff says the dream isn’t about college anymore. It’s about something else. I’m too old. It’s been too long since college.

Maybe.

But in my waking hours I love to happily reflect on how college shaped me. My education.The ways I use the bits and snatches of history and literature and art in my writing today. And the bigger stuff. The reach of the mind. The curiosity of the spirit. The wanting to be your own person as you delight in the brilliance of those who have gone before.

So this framed pamphlet, on the wall of the Red Elephant Inn in North Conway, New Hampshire, made my eyes pop. All l I’ve got to say to the author, E.J. Richards, is that I did all of those things in college. Yep, every single one. SO THERE!

And to our foremothers AND forefathers who campaigned for women’s education, LISTEN UP!

I don’t blame you for my college dream. I blame that on some failing of my psyche. Instead, I thank you. Let’s shout it from every quad and dorm and student union in the nation. You let us girls dream big. You gave us big stuff to dream about. On this Fourth of July, we thank you!

The bottom photo is Catharine Beecher, champion of women’s education and sister to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Read the tragedy of her life and the way she turned it for good.

Anxiety Dreams: Here’s an article on anxiety dreams. The article  mentions the high school locker dream, which  I still have every now and then:. I put my things in a locker and then either can’t remember which locker it is or the right locker combination.