Dear Reader,

 And here we have come back to the question that sent us on this entire journey.

 How they made life work after Hampshire. 

How did people who have faced a vast area of challenges related to aspects like sexuality, gender, ability, class, race, ethnicity, along with other societal differences, make their past, present, and future work? How did they or do they plan to build a life for themselves once they left college? How did people like myself pursue their passions in a society where many passions struggle to support life? 

How did they do it?

How do they continue to do it? 

Can I learn from their way of doing so I can do? 

After spending time with all the letters, after interviewing the writers, and wrapping up my days of my own Div 3, I have taken two main points away about this question.

1. I am not alone. 

From 1970 up to the present day, I am not the only one who has asked this question; I am not the only one who feels lost and confused about where they’re at in life. As a society, we tend to believe that the people who are already at the next step that we want to be at have their life together. That they know what they are doing, and they always knew what they were doing. I believe there is a tendency to idolize the people we admire or take instruction under to the point that we forget that they are human. Made of the same flesh and blood that we ourselves are made, they do not exist as the main character we have made them out to be. They have thoughts they do not share, moments of weakness we may not see, mistakes they view as failures that they must learn from. We are so much more alike than we are different. A lesson I feel I passively was aware of before starting this project, but have more of an active awareness after having done the project. 

Ellie Siegel, a graduate of 1977 and later a professor at the institution  from which she received her undergraduate degree, captured the questions that plague her mind before graduating. She writes her first-year worries writing.

“Before you began college, your parents had told you that they would pay for 4 semesters at a private school, and the rest was up to you. There was no plan, and you didn’t really understand how they imagined this working out, but since Hampshire’s system involved so much independent study anyway, you figured that somehow it would. At this point, however, although your advisor David Smith doesn’t seem worried, you are aware that you have already burned through ¾ of those four semesters. It is increasingly difficult to see how this will end.”

“Your questions: Will I ever leave my parents’ basement? Will I ever want to?”

“Your questions: How can I sustain a writing practice—while earning money? How can I expand my understanding of what the category woman means? How can I use my work to better the world? How can I build scaffolding for my own work, as well as the work of other women?

What kind of work makes me happy?

What kind of life do I want to live?  

And how can I live it with

the most open and attentive presence possible?”

At the end of her letter, she parts by writing, “While you were still a student, someone coined the phrase, “creative floundering” to describe the loneliness and lostness you experienced, along with hinting at its generative power. Although Creative Floundering only partially described your own trajectory, the idea was helpful to you in that it hinted at a communal experience, something that others besides you were undergoing.”

Letter writers from all decades wrote questions like these, discussed their doubts like these with me, described in invariantly their own experience floundering. The knowledge that I am not the only one who fears the unknown, who ruminates over all the possible ways that life can take shape, is comforting for lack of better words. 

1. I am capable of making the life I want to live.

A belief that I have been combating since I entered college was that life was to be what it wanted to be. The direction in which my relationships, passions, and connections to the world were determined without input from me. I was at the mercy of what the universe decided my world look like. Through my own divisional process, I have learned that this is not true.  

The effort you put in will always be good enough, maybe not to others, but someone, Even if that someone is only yourself. 

“what I hope for them is that they find those kinds of authentic, opening experiences that allow them to keep learning or keep changing the way they think about things and see things. And   when I see those moments in my class, even right now, like when they’re able to be like, Oh, my God, I never thought about it that way. Those moments cumulatively are what impact us to change the course of our lives. And I think Hampshire did that. For me. I think it does it for a lot of people. And I hope for my students that they’re able to find those opportunities, you know, wherever they end up going.” – Casey Zella Andrews. Div III  2012

There are so many ways for you to be an artist if that is what you want.

 “It [ her flexible thinking] allows you to be versatile in a market that doesn’t know art. You use your hard-earned skills to teach kids and help them conduct art therapy, you make latte art that makes people smile, you draw your friends’ intimate moments so they can relive happy memories. The problem-solving abilities you cultivate this year help you become a political strategist, as all it really is telling and selling a story, something you absolutely hammered into your brain. The phrase you crystallize of “Think sideways” this year opens up so many job opportunities and even helps you save Hampshire College down the road. You adapt to survive, and when you start thriving, you take the freaking wheel and gun it.” 

Rachel Creemers Div III 2014 

There will always be space for you to grow the way you need to, to learn lessons  you have to, and to become a different you. 

“My time at Hampshire came at a critical point in my life. My parents had just split up badly… I had just moved to the states from years in India and had an overwhelming sense of being out of step. Hampshire gave me a solid, inspiring, fun way out of tragedy”

 Leslie Hiebert Div III 1978

No matter how many times your heart has been broken, You can find love again.

“And then, when you settle in, you’ll find your real people. And, I’ve got to tell you, kid, your real people, are pretty incredible. They’re gonna be with you for a long, long time” Issy Tobey Div III 2018

You can live the life you want to live. 

For many letter writers, Hampshire was also the key to discovering these things. 

From 1977, when Siegel realized that “It is only incrementally, over the decades, that you start to understand how formative Hampshire has been over your life journey. To carry throughout life the North Star of self-authorization fueled by curiosity and a passion for social justice is a profound gift. But the words and phrases that you and the college have generated over the decades still don’t quite capture the complexity and depth of the learning curve.”

All the way to 2021 when Madi Chassin, a 2019 graduate, and now works as a production assistant for  television shows, wrote, “The thing about Hampshire is, it doesn’t just give you the confidence to embark on a huge project like that, but it gives you all of the tools and the know-how. So try not to be scared anymore. Just learn, take it all in, and you’ll be prepared. I promise”

Reader, even if you are not a Hampshire student, even if you have not taken this fantastic journey called being a Hampshire student, you will figure this life out, you will find a way to live the life you want to live. 

I promise. 

Sincerely, 

Molly Marie