Dear Miss Lonely Hearts,
In the Spring, I signed up to take a course at Lewis and Clark College through Reed. I went to our registrar’s office and filled out my paperwork, and Ben promised me that all would be figured out over the summer. On the Monday of O-Week, however, a scary thing happened. I checked my mail and addressed to (my name and mailstop) 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd was a tuition bill for $22,000 from Lewis and Clark! Following this obviously startling bill, I’ve started receiving installments of the Weekly Bark, which I must say is both more concise and perhaps more exciting than SB Info. I’ve even considered buying a Pioneers sweatshirt, and have entered their bookstore raffle to see if they will pay for my textbooks for this semester. I want to maintain my Reed spirit but their campus is beautiful, their lawns aren’t filled with smokers, and I swear, even their squirrels seem a little more alive than ours. They crawl up the trees filled with youthful vigor and don’t seem to be plagued with a sense of stress about upcoming paper due dates.
What should I do, Miss Lonely Hearts? I just want to be able to enjoy Daft Ball without hearing jokes about what a Reedie and a Clarkie have in common. (answer: they both applied to Reed.)
Signed,
Reed’s Confused Pioneer
Dear Pioneer,
This is a scary new time for you – you’re returning to your long-term relationship with Reed, settling back into a routine, and remembering that, though you love it, it does things that drive you just crazy. It’s like: take your Commons dishes off the porch sometimes, Reedie! Do you think I’m your servant? Amidst all of this confusion and stress, a new player waltzes into your life. A romance with it would be carefree and easy, full of walks on a campus/nature preserve and football games played on an actual football field. It sometimes seems like Reed doesn’t even know what football is, much less that it cares.
Look, I’d be the first to admit that Reed is sometimes hard to love. Reed can be high-maintenance and difficult to reason with. Often it seems like Reed’s favorite thing to do is stress out about its thesis. And as you’ve noticed, we haven’t yet successfully trapped all of the smokers in the underground bunkers where they belong. But as with any long-term relationship, you have to love your college... flaws and all. Do you remember why you fell in love with Reed in the first place? Was it the wild abandon of Renn Fayre? Long conversations you had in your common room, not realizing that the sun was rising? Livy, inexplicably? Reed hasn’t lost any of those things! You just have to remember how to find them! Amongst your paper deadlines and thesis proposals, all those magical moments are still there.
You have to understand, Pioneer, you can’t have both. You can double down and recommit to your relationship with Reed, or you can set out on something new with Lewis and Clark. But don’t expect Reed to welcome you back after you’ve been on another college campus. You’ll be like “it’s fine, baby! I haven’t changed!” while you’re climbing on the roof of Kaul and groping girls at Daft Ball. But you know what, Pioneer, you have changed. Reed won’t hook you up with some molly, so you’d better find Eliot Circle and get back on your party bus, because if you decide to run off to Lewis and Clark, YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE ANYMORE.
Choose wisely.
Miss Lonely Hearts