Molly Marie McLaughlin (she/her)
Self-Bio: Hello I’m Molly, the curator of this archive! I believe it is through the act of storytelling, through communicating , and listening to one another that we truly learn. I am using my div 3 as an opportunity to actively do that. By crafting a space for those who have come before me and those who are working beside me to reflect on their time at Hampshire, I am hoping to find stories and facilitate conversation to help me explore the questions that have waxed and wane through my mind all through out college.
Year of div 3: 2021
Name of div: What We Remember : An archive of letters and personal narratives about the non-male Hampshire experience from 1970-2021.
Short summary of your div 3 :
My div can be described in three parts
1. The archive, the collection of letters that this response lives among
2. A six part letter series that explores the patterns found in the letters as well as personal narrative pieces from yours truely
3. A personal letter writing project titled “Dear future”. This piece captures the monthly progression of my div process over the course of a year (March 2020- March 2021)
Hampshire’s influence: Hampshire I feel like has had a giant influence on my life! The best way I can summarize it is through a conversation that I had with my friend Nora. She wrote in her letter that before she got to Hampshire she believed that “College would be her savior” That by going to college that all of her problems of the past would disappear. She goes on to say in the letter that she learns that college is not the savior she believed it to be. When I was going into college I had a very similar belief. In my letter to my younger self I take an excerpt from my freshman year journal where I am basically saying that college is my new start, that the past is the past, and everything that happens from this point on is who I am. In the same vain that Nora learns that college is not her savior I learn that my problems do not just disappear because I say they do. However unlike Nora I would describe Hampshire as my savior. Not because Hampshire took away all my problems but more so because Hampshire gave me space in order to face those problems, to face them in a way that I not only grow out of them, but I grow from them.
What place on campus was significant to you?: I feel like there are places that I have defiantly spent more time in, have more memories in, however, the place that sticks out in my mind when I read this question is one of the many treehouses that sits waiting for wanderers in Hampshire woods. I found this place in a moment when I was feeling lost (both mentally and physically…I am TERRIBLE when it come to directions!) I was just going to go for a quick walk, to the woods party area and back, a way to try to clear my head. On my way back I became lost. This is when I found the treehouse.
Describe the on-campus place as you remember it: The treehouse is located in a tree on the edge of a field that is next to the field that the wood party area overlooks, on the opposite side of solar panels (again terrible with directions, this is probably the best you’re going to get from me!) Other than some shrubbery, it is not very hidden or hard to get too, however can be very easily missed due to materials it is built from blending into its environment well. The materials: scraps pieces of metal and wood that ether were abandoned in the woods, or brought to the woods solely for the houses purpose, it is unclear. If you decide to climb into the house you would begin your journey at a small silver latter. With the help of the shiny metallic bars and a frayed rope that dangles from one of tree’s limbs you will reach branches easy enough to grasp on too. From here you must use your own weight to leverage yourself up to the first platform. Stop a moment to rest on the bench that has been nailed into a gap in the branches, enjoy the view of the landscape from this height, or rubbish through forgotten trinkets left to decay in a rusted tool box. This is all very cool, but my favorite part is the roof. If you plant your feet on the top rim of the bench and pull yourself up on just the right branch you can get to this magnistant place. The structure itself has nothing stunning. It is in fact only a roof, however, there are two aspects that in my eyes make this spot grand.
1. The view.
If you were to look outward the view is the same as it is as the level below, just a bit elevated. however, if you were to look up you would see something completely brand new. What sits above you is not an open sky, however, it is a sky traced by tree branches, outlined and highlighted by the shapes and curves that the branches decided to take. When it is windy they dance, they dance hand in hand with whatever colors the sky seems to take. It is mesmerizing!
2. The mailbox.
On this roof sits a mailbox. Much like it’s neighbor below, it is cover in paint chips and rust that cause it to squeak when it opens and closes. This mailbox is filled with letters written by Hampshire students, past and present. The letters cover an array of topics, from love notes that have never seemed to reach lovers’ eyes, to letters that spoke to others’ journeys to this treehouse, letters to Hampshire, to Amherst, to the world.
During my first trip, I put a letter in this box.
I gave the letters, past and present a view into my head, into how lost I was feeling, I told the readers who have come and gone that my life is not simple, it will never be simple, and that is ok. I signed off by saying, that though we may become lost, we will always be found, just not in the ways that we were when we lost ourselves. I believe that advice was more for me than for them.
It was through the act of getting lost, of finding this place, of writing this letter that I think I began to heal.
(Maybe this is the reason my div is what it is)
What place off-campus was significant to you?:I don’t think I can choose a place, I think I can choose a feeling, I think I can choose a feeling that I felt in many places off campus
Describe the off-campus place as you remember it.:Alone, in the most blissful of ways, lost in the most found ways, separate in the most together of ways.
11/12/20
Dear Past,
I read through our journal.
Well, I guess it’s more your journal than it is mine.
To me, it’s only a relic now. A time capsule holding the person you are, who I used to be. It’s weird to think about that. How objects can hold time, how space can hold memory.
It’s actually what we decided to do our div on. The idea of space and memory, an exploration of past and present non-male div threes through the art of letters, and interviews.
Bet you didn’t think that would be your div!
… Well, actually, I know you didn’t think that would be your div.
A div full of reading through prior div 3s, hunting down contact information, letter writing, and lots and lots of organizing and categorizing to not lose any of these pieces.
Or your sanity.
Well, what you have left of it…
Congrats! This is the reality you will soon inherit!
Yay!!!
Now, if I remember correctly, your reality currently consists of forging new friendships, late-night hall talks, figuring out new patterns of routine and structure, both personal and social, exploring Amherst and Northampton, struggling to keep up with school work, questioning your identity, being both in awe and terrified of almost everything, and lots and lots of anxiety around all this. Did I forget anything?
((I don’t think I did. ))
You know, in a lot of ways, life for you and I are still the same. We still spend late nights talking to our friends, still trying to structure our realities, still explore new parts of land that surrounds us, still fall behind on schoolwork, still questioning who you are, still take the stance of ecstatic and terrified in almost every situation, and still very anxious of a human being.
However, I would say the way we approach these things, these things that we call our life, is quite different.
The best way I can describe this difference is through your own words.
You wrote on November 6th, 2017.
“Why look at the past when I am in the now? College is my new starting point. What happened in the past is in the past. What happens now is what will build my future, and I am trying to make it positive, not one drag down by past baggage.”
You know, I can see you. Writing these words. You’re probably propped up on your overly heightened dorm room bed, the one you begged your step-father to raise when he helped you move in. The blue and gold sheets that matched pretty much every artifact in your dorm room, an obsession with color-coding that does not fully fade, sit smoothed underneath you. Sunlight casts shadow puppets on your one lavender wall. The branches of the pine tree that sits right outside your window, making your dreams of living in a treehouse an almost reality, giving them motion. Your hair, freshly cut to your shoulders, shaded with hues of depleting pink thrown into a tight bun on the top of your head. I have no clue what you are wearing. Your style was and still is, never something set in stone. I just know it is something probably quirky, yet somehow still comfortable.
I see you sitting here, writing these words, sitting, trying to use this philosophy to build a new life for yourself. One that discards the hands that carried you up to this point. One that is only melancholy when you deem it appropriate, one full of smiles and laughter, a positive graph of growth, no dips, no dive, only on the up and up. You want so bad to be happy, for life to be “perfect” that you refuse to acknowledge anything that could make you sad. Which included the things from your not so distant past that have a way of creeping into your present.
Love, we learn the very hard way that this is not possible. Your past is not something you can easily discard. You can not just ignore it. Your past is in everything you do; that is what everything is rooted in. You cannot change unless you know and understand the before; you understand the roots.
It is here at the school that you will begin to understand this. Here in the roots of Hampshire’s free-flowing structure, you can explore and understand your own.
You learn words for the feelings you crave the most.
Love Confidence Connection
Autonomy
Independents Balance
Dependents
Interdependent Satisfaction
Stability
Peace Self-esteem
Acceptance value
You learn the words for that which you want to give your life to.
Memory Reflection People
Interview Videos Creative non-fiction
Storytelling Ethnography Letters
Listening Writing Documentation
You learn to shine a light on words that haunt you.
Grief Anxiety
Loss
Missing
depression
Begging for a stop
Fear of conflict
Secrets
“Mistakes”
You may be wondering, where do I, you, we, learn this?
Well, our classes definitely have a massive impact on the uncovering of these discoveries.
The lessons and topics you dive into in your video production classes, your non-fiction writing classes, and independent studies, definitely push and pull you into directions that, from an academic standpoint, help you discover a lot of this vocabulary. However, Hampshire’s physical being, the memories that your home for the last 4 years has held, can also be given equal weight.
You learn these as you scurry through the magic bathroom doors of Dakin, chasing your new best friends through the halls the doors transport you threw, the smell of your first drink fumigates off of pools of laughter.
You learn these in the streets of Northampton, Amherst, and all the towns that branch off from here. You weave pieces of yourself into hidden alleyways and corners neglected by the non-poetic eyes, your ears in search of stories of those labeled as familiar.
You learn these late at night, in the middle of your mod bedroom, basically your first apartment, a place you set up for comfort, on these nights you could find anything but.
Through the “liberal arts experience,” through Hampshire, the opportunities that Hampshire gifts you.
You’ve learned all this.
Do you remember when we were nervous about if we had made the right choice about coming to this school?
You were between here; Hampshire, A quirky little liberal arts school with a curriculum so unlike anything we have ever seen before. No grades, no majors, everything was self-driven, everything was up to you.
And
Bridgewater State University, the state school that almost all students from your high school filtered into. Grades, majors, requirements to fulfill, a level of academic freedom tether to a rope.
Financial aid being the deciding factor for these final two choices. They are the schools that give you the most.
Our choice was
Status quo Or different
As you know, we chose different.
As you will soon experience, this is the first of many risks that you will take.
Risk, you learn, comes in many forms.
Risk in the form of choice
Sleep found in the light of airport runways, Routine in the unfamiliar, friendship in the strangest of circumstances, 6 months away from home-three day journey across the world- mom and dad did not fully approve-but fuck you didnt ask them! You found independence in their fears- you found comfort in your independents.
Risk in the form of impulses
Buses to nowhere, kissing boys in alleyways, spinning girls till music is visible, allowing tree bark to leave scars on your arms and windows to leave bruises on your legs, collecting rent from the mud between your toes, and ink between your nails, giving permission to the rain to sew weight into your cloths and your voice to match pitch with thunder.
Risk in the form of instincts
Finding destinations without directions, wandering into locked places, mastering the art of being a present shadow- so much magic held in this state- a power to make time comply to your thoughts.
Risk in the form of desperation.
You’ll know this one when it comes to you, I do not need to describe it.
Yet, with all these risks, you will realize that Hampshire is the most significant one. Without the risk of Hampshire, none of the others would’ve happened. None of the learning, the discovery of roots, would’ve happened.
Don’t get me wrong. You could’ve made Bridgewater work. You could have made anywhere work. That is another similarity between you and me; we have always been able to make things work.
However, I can say with 100% certainty that we would not be
on the same path of academia
able to say we have been on the same adventures
Made as deep connections with people as we have
as knowledgeable of our roots as we are now
Or the scariest thought
simply be.
As I write, that is what I am doing, your biggest fear, simply being.
I sit in my standard height bed. Half because for the last three years, it has only been you who has moved yourself in and out of Hampshire, and half because you realize how ridiculous it is to have a bed that high. Your sheets are now white, with floral patterns of blue and orange. The relics in your room tell the tale of your past 4 years more than they follow a story of color. There is no tree to work with the sun to produce shadow shows on your blank white walls, but you have a window that is positioned and opens in such a way that your friends and you can play the roles of Romeo and Juliet, which I think is pretty cool. Our hair is down painted with strikes of icy blue that tickle the mid of our back. I’m in PJs cause it’s kinda late but don’t worry, our style hasn’t really changed too much. Quirky and comfortable are still a staple in our wardrobe.
I am sitting here, writing these words, sitting, trying to use the things I have learned to grow the life that we have built for ourselves. One that does not slap away the hands that carried us up to this point. One where all emotions are seen as appropriate, one full of smiles and laughter, but also of tears and anger. You know to be happy that you must open your eyes to every part of life, evaluate, reflect, pay attention to the things that show up from the past, and adjust to accommodate them.
With the practice of this new philosophy, You can truly live.
You can live a life that makes you feel alive.
Something I know right now,
you both crave and are terrified by.
One last thing before I go, Molly, 18-year-old, wide-eyed, inhale fear exhale excitement Molly, I know how hesitant you would be to write these words. Fuck, I am almost 4 years your senior ( 22 in less than 20 days. Can you believe that?!?), and I am still hesitant to write these words, but I am proud of us both. Yeah, I really truly am.
I’ll write again soon, I promise,
Present.
What We Remember 