Smith College & Narratives of Success

I am an alumna of Smith College. I attended the all-women's liberal arts college in the small New England town of Northampton, Massachusetts for my first year of college, before transferring with no regrets to the University of Utah. However, because Smith is a really well-endowed school, they send all their alumnae a quarterly magazine, four times a year, just so alums can stay in touch with the college---Smith was one of those 7 sister colleges, partnered back in the day with Yale. So alums stay connected because the brand name of Smith. One of the ways they do this is to contribute to the trust funds the college has. I know many of their alumnae contribute because one of my student jobs (aside from catering, stocking the kitchen, and cleaning bathrooms) was to ask alumnae for donations in the annual phone-a-thon (barf, I'd done telemarketing before in high school, and it was not fun). This was all new to me---this East Coast Syndicate shit, I was not one of the East Coast syndicate boarding school bitches, as I call them, no offense). I remember calling many alums and them plopping down two or three grand on their visas like they were giving away candy. One was a speechwriter for the President.
Anyways, the latest Summer 2007 Smith Alumnae Quarterly had an article that piqued my interest, from the current President of Smith , Carol Christ. The article, "Life Stories: Smith is poised to help young women rewrite their own narratives of success", and it made me think back to the crossroads in my life where I decided Smith was not meeting my needs. Carol Christ writes, "..it is every young woman's story to write, and women's colleges are well positioned to foster the conversations and reflections to help her write it.", this leads into her launching "Women' Narratives of Success", which through workshops "encourages students to think deeply and systematically about their multiple life goals." Right now, I've taken out some old school boxes, one which oholds my University of Utah Bachelor of Science degree. It states I have been conferred this degree "with all its Rights, Honors and Responsibilities". However, I don't remember being told what these rights, honors and responsibilities were. And now I'm enrolled in a PhD program, where the words epistemology, and all those attendant and corresponding lines of thought, just gets hazy. It brings to mind that great old standard "Imagination": imagination is funny, makes a cloudy day sunny, makes the bee think of honey, just like i think of you, imagination is crazy, your whole perspective gets hazy, starts you asking a daisy, what to do? what to do?" Imagination....what if I had gotten my degree from Smith instead of the UofU? Would I have other "rights" to success? Would my knowledge garnered and gathered and given at/from Smith be more pertinently entangled in my own 'narrative of success'.
The other day at Goodwill, I bought a t-shirt with a quote attributed to Albert Einstein "Imagination is more important than Knowledge". What I did not tune into at Smith was that imagined world of rights, success, and privilege. I remember being really pissed off that there was a support group for "Low-Income Students", and the only student organization I was drawn to (but too insecure to join) was a black sorority AKA, because they wore pink and green and learned to stomp, not to mention socialize with some fine black and latino boyz from across the nation....
I've decided my narrative of success would be very different if I had been conferred the rights, honors, and responsibilities of a Bachelor's degree from Smith. My narrative of success went off-grid. And adventurously I set forth to tackle a dream and a calling, which has more to do with imagination and the people of the sea...than with east coast syndicates....and can you imagine I regret nothing, but savor every crossroads which brought me closer to the place I stand today, here in Hau'ula Hawai'i....poised to lift off towards another adventure in Tongatapu....My narrative of success,,,,,,this is truly something to contemplate, and I'm grateful for the Smith College Alumnae Quarterly for keeping these kinds of meditations on my mind.