Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [0]
Cecily von Ziegesar
Previously published as Cum Laude
For my teachers
Considering the lack of direction in the world, it seems as though many people get through college and beyond without really questioning who they are.
—Preface, The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, 1992
Contents
Epigraph
1
College is for lovers. At least, this one was. Looming…
2
The relationship between town and college is often fraught with…
3
It’s often said that the best way to strengthen a…
4
The sheep were out grazing and the house was quiet.
5
College has a break-in period. First there is the unfamiliar…
6
Dexter was an earnest place. Eliza had been waiting all…
7
And so it went. Shipley lost her virginity to Tom…
8
At college you are free to do as you please,…
9
November was a curious month. Some days it was warm…
10
Why take the job when she didn’t need the money?
11
In driver’s ed they teach you that most accidents happen…
12
Tuesday was Election Day. The more conscientious students hurried back…
13
Nick lost his zen the hard way. It was taken…
14
Holidays are a state of mind. You spend all day…
15
December came, and it was as if Thanksgiving had never…
16
Even the most bucolic college suffers from bouts of nerves,…
17
Second best to earning a lot of money and spending…
18
The sun had set at five o’clock and the air…
19
The average freshman course load at a liberal arts college…
20
They say a pet can do wonders for your mental…
21
The dorms were alive again. Everyone had returned from the…
22
It wasn’t that long ago that Nick had waited outside…
23
Sleep and wakefulness are active states controlled by specific groups…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Permissions
1
College is for lovers. At least, this one was. Looming up out of the trees on its hilly pedestal, Dexter College looked so strikingly pretty and at the same time so quaintly academic, it was almost as out of place in its rural setting as some of its students. The campus was fortified on all sides by forests of ancient conifers, tall birches, and dense maples, so that only the proud white spire of the college chapel was visible from town. Homeward Avenue, the road that led uphill to campus from Interstate 95, continued down the hill to the blink-and-you’d-miss-it town of Home, Maine, which consisted of a Walmart, a Shop ’n Save, the Rod and Gun Club, and a few mom-and-pop shops frequented only by locals.
Shipley Gilbert would have sprinted up the hill to campus if she could, but her family’s Mercedes was loaded down with a semester’s worth of freshman essentials, so she had to drive. At least her mother wasn’t with her. Shipley had insisted on that.
She steered the car into one of the temporary parking spots in front of an imposing brick building with the word “Coke” engraved in marble over its black double doors. The parking area was a busy place. Students carted wheeled suitcases and cardboard boxes, dads reined back dogs on leashes, little sisters twirled their skirts, little brothers shot at birds with their fingers cocked, moms fanned the humid air. The sky was blue, the grass green and freshly shorn, the brick red and clean. A gaggle of tie-dyed T-shirted boys played Hacky Sack on the sprawling lawn. A handsome young English professor sat cross-legged as he read aloud from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, trying to inspire a thirst for something other than beer in the twitching semicircle of incoming freshmen seated around him. Three girls in matching pink Dexter T-shirts jogged toward the field house.
Dexter College was exactly as advertised.
Shipley stepped out of the car, releasing the scent of Camel cigarettes and Juicy Fruit gum into the sun-burnished air. Never a gum chewer or a smoker, she’d decided to cultivate both habits on the drive up. A late August wind rustled the maple trees that stood between the car and the quad—that long expanse of grass at the center of Dexter’s campus. On either side of the quad, redbrick buildings with massive white columns challenged each