October 2022

COUNTERPOINT

the wellesley college journal of campus life

october 2022 volume 59 issue 1

Letter from the editors-in-chief

Dear readers,

Welcome to another year of Counterpoint. After a summer spent staring at Excel spreadsheets, consuming a concerning amount of dirty matcha lattes (Hailey) and virtually exploring the development of archaeology from classical civilizations to Wellesley’s College Hall (Alice), we are eager to get back to work.

We first want to thank you for picking this issue up. We strive to keep Counterpoint an open space for the Wellesley community. One of the greatest things about Counterpoint is that we accept any article within our submission guidelines, which gives us the power to diversify student voices from every corner of campus. So, if you have an article that you’d like to submit—whether it be an essay on climate change or a reflection on Taylor Swift’s latest album—we encourage you to share it with us. If you are hesitant to share, do it anyway. As a publication created by students for students, we want to capture all aspects of Wellesley life, whether it’s good, bad, or plain strange. If you have a piece you’d like to share with the rest of campus, or would just like to get something off your chest, you have come to the right place. Here, your voice matters.

Our staff members have dedicated many hours to creating this issue, and we hope that you enjoy reading this issue as much as we did putting it together. So take a break from that PSET, you can figure that out during office hours. Let your eyes look at something other than that screen of your almost half-written essay. Whether you are reading this tucked under your cozy comforter (we’re jealous) or passing the time before your next class, we want to thank you for your continued support. Counterpoint has now existed on campus for a little over three decades. We owe this achievement to you, as we would not be here today if it weren’t for your continued interest and support. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts. It is truly an honor to work on Counterpoint, and we will try our best to serve you well.

Publishing creative student work and making it accessible to the broader Wellesley community is a worthy project, and we are beyond grateful that you are here with us, right now, at this very moment, ready to embark on this journey together.

Here’s to another amazing year, Hailey Cho ‘23 Alice Mei ‘23

Editors-in-Chief

SUBMISSION POLICY

The magazine accepts non-fiction submissions that are respectful, are submitted with sufficient time for editing, and have not been published elsewhere. We encourage cooperation between writers and editors but reserve the right to edit all content for length and clarity. Email submissions, ideas, or questions to the Editorsin-Chief (hc2 or am11). The views expressed in Counterpoint do not necessarily reflect the views of the magazine staff or the Wellesley community. Counterpoint does not solicit specific pieces from students, rather we publish the pieces that we receive each month and do our best to publish all appropriate submissions that we receive.

Images: Yitzel Serna '26

Editors-in-Chief

Alice Mei ' 23 Hailey Cho ' 23

Precious Kim '25 Managing Editor

Features Editor

Staff Editors

Natalie McDermott '25

Hailey Cho '23 Alice Mei '23

Marie Kester '23

Lauren Witt '24

Precious Kim '25 Camryn Ward '25

Camille Newman '25

Treya Pember '25

Jennifer Doyle '25 Bella Cui '26 Ana Paku '26 Dan Lu '26

Trisha Atluri '26 Alex Greenblatt '26 Ella Knight '26

DESIGN STAFF

Production Manager

Layout Editors

Jennifer Long ’25 Hailey Cho '23 Alice Mei '23 Audrey Mah '26 Kami Lim '26

BUSINESS STAFF

Art Director

Kami Lim '26

Bella Cui '26 Publicity Chair

Events Manager

Treasurer

Website Manager

Trisha Atluri '26

Lauren Witt '24

Camille Newman '25

TRUSTEES

Olivia Funderburg ’18, Allyson Larcom ’17, Hanna Day-Tenerowicz ’16, Cecilia Nowell ’16, Oset Babur ’15, Alison Lanier ’15, Kristina Costa ’09, Kara Hadge ’08

THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE JOURNAL OF CAMPUS LIFE OCTOBER 2022 Volume 59 / Issue 1

Iwas last on the waitlist.

Or, at least, one of the last. Af ter falling in love with Wellesley, I ED II-ed, got deferred, waitlisted, waitlisted again, and then finally placed on a late summer waitlist so obscure that I’ve yet to meet someone else with the same experience, save for my first-year room mate. I was in Norway in mid-July when I received the initial text from a Wellesley Admissions employee. I spent the rest of the week nervous that they would renege their offer because I had not filled in the portal (WiFi was sparse in Scandi

navia). Somewhere out there, there is a video of me opening up my initial admis sion results in front of my friends. My smile drops, and I begin to cry. The video abruptly ends.

Coming to Wellesley has, at times, felt less like reality and more like a dream I could wake up from at any time. Even four years later, I find myself startled by the opportunities it has granted me. Pro fessionally, Wellesley’s rigor has guaran teed me a job; socially, I have made life long friends. But most importantly, I have fallen in love with the well-rounded na-

ture of a liberal arts education. Although I came in bemoaning what appeared to be erratic graduation requirements, I have grown to appreciate the very classes I once dismissed: art history, gender stud ies, social justice seminars, and psychol ogy. I have found my strengths (computer science, writing long rambling articles, a rediscovered love of reading) and learned to let go of my weaknesses (economics, overthinking, and problematic viewpoints about race, sex, and queerness). In a way I never expected, I have become the person I hoped Wellesley would turn me into.

At the same time, Wellesley is an ins tiution that sometimes feels like a neverending competition. Conversations with friends turn into discussions about salary and job prospects. I am forever envious of other people with better internships and research opportunities, constantly perplexed as to why I am unable to finish a problem set at the same rate as some of my classmates. These are the moments when I have to take a step back, reevalu ate the toxicity of the environment, and then take the steps necessary to address it. It is easy to feel that you are the dumb est person in the room and that you do not belong here. I assure you that these thoughts are false.

My first year in particular was plagued by imposter syndrome. Imagine that you know you were last on the waitlist. Every time you look at someone, you know that in some aspect, the Wellesley admissions

Images: Alice Mei '23, Canva

IDENTITY

team found them more worthy, that ev eryone here was chosen because of some excelling point on their application. You were the afterthought — squeezed in as a last-minute replacement. And even then, I knew I had an edge over other promis ing waitlist candidates because I ED-ed, rather than any reason based on merit.

Once, I told a friend about my situation and she placed a consoling hand on my shoulder and told me, “You’re pretty smart for a waitlist student!” I’m sure she was trying to be encouraging. Those words were anything but.

I’ve discovered that it’s much easier to apply for positions, jobs, and opportu nities when you’re confident in yourself. There have been times when I’ve consid ered applying for something and hesitated

long enough over the submit button for the intrusive thoughts to win. Wanting to join the Wellesley News in my first se mester, I was instantly discouraged when I saw the number of people who appeared during the first open meeting. Instead of applying to write, I chose to copy-edit. I don’t regret my time as a copy-editor (I have many fond memories spent in the dimly lit hall by Tower first-floor), but I do regret my lack of drive. The News didn’t care about how precarious my ac ceptance to Wellesley was. Nobody did — except me.

It’s taken me years to shake off those thoughts, and by now it’s late enough that it hardly seems to matter. I can laugh about it. I can confidently tell the entire school that I was last on the waitlist, and

I can also tell everyone that I’ve thrived at Wellesley. Last year, I was co-Editor-inChief of the very same newspaper I once thought I had no chance in joining. I'll be graduating with honors in a major I once told people I wasn’t smart enough for. And if I, of all people, have learned to reclaim my spot in this school, there's no reason you should doubt yourself either.

Cheryl Wang '23 (cw5) is a senior who chucked her imposter syndrome in the trash upon writing this article.

MENTAL HEALTH We Know No Balance

Confusion, at Its Finest

The buzzing engine, the faint cabin light, the sharp cry of vexed infants, the muffled noise of food carts rolling. I wake up shivering with Hong Kong thousands of miles away. Or maybe more. Everything weaves together by chance, and the intricate, complicated, and unpredictable world carries us like the ocean carries a wooden vessel. The vessel floats, thinking it owns itself, its capabilities, its existence. But the next second the ocean may decide to swallow it whole.

I close my eyes again. ***

BY LI YIN

The next thing I know the rays of sunlight through the windows of my quar antine hotel are going dim. Rain—the pitter patter conceals the brightness of the sun, demanding that its darkness and dampness, too, have a chance to nourish the Earth. What comes with end-of-June Gloom is nonetheless essential to mak ing all things grow. Nature speaks the language of balance fluently, wielding the yin and yang into cycles of life and death, where nothing can exist without an opposite other.

Humans, though, have grown to con demn contrast—difference is despicable, and balance becomes the nemesis of pro ductivity. Is it that we are so segregated

from Nature that we lose our fluency in this ancient language? When was the last time I filled my lungs with fresh air, uncontaminated by the fumes and dust? When was the last time I let my feet touch green grass, feeling the dirt as it seeps through my toes? I cannot remember. Maybe if we all climb a tree and sit there for a few minutes every day, the world will be a better place.

Ha! Tell that to the General Secretary. ***

July looms over the neon lights like a veil, falling on the city. Hong Kong is like a vibrant yet dormant pearl—its shell is shut, isolated from the rest of the world. Here, feelings of anger, confusion, nostal gia,

Images: Canva

and hope all crash and collide with each other, like my restless thoughts in this secluded cubicle.

In the distance, I see his helicopters fly ing over Victoria Harbor: celebrating the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to us, the end of our century of humilia tion, the refinding of a piece of our soul once carved away, and they are to blame.

But perhaps it’s true. The colonization of Hong Kong occured because the West didn’t understand balance. The taking-back of the city, however, ironi cally symbolizes China’s illiteracy in bal ance—it wants more; more power, more influence, and more loyalty. But why does no one understand that stability cannot be achieved through violence? An invasive species never creates a stable ecosystem by taking other plants’ rights to live. Nature knows.

I guess it’s different though. Besides, plants never give up their lives willingly, do they?

***

The first thing you are taught the mo ment you are born is to obey, to keep your mouth shut. We as a race must be hard working and never complain. Stop crying. Stop yelling. Be a good kid. Submit your self to others. Listen to the elders, your ancestors. Authorities should eat first, sit first, enter a room first, raise their glass higher than yours when you toast. You live for them, die for them, until one day you earn your right to be one of them. And someone else begins this cycle again. Submission runs in the crimson in our veins, the yellow of our skin, and the black of our pupils. Tradition says: cower to someone else, put your thoughts and desires away because another wishes differently. We will never find balance, never find stability, as long as we choose to give up who we are just so another can be in dulged more than they should be.

There are so many caught in the middle of this paradox—those who criticize how

the red machine operates but oil its gears by upholding rotting traditions. They say that over so many centuries, our people have lived bitter lives, burdened by cruel rulers. They say we already lost the abil ity to live with freedom. But have we ever truly tried, or even wanted, to break free?

***

Am I even trying? Or wanting? Be cause I don’t think anyone will ever read this essay. I may never muster the cour age to announce its existence. Does writ ing still have value without an audience? What is art without the eyes of a behold er? I think all of this still matters though; it is the creator’s act of creation, not the existence of an audience, that gives art meaning. I am writing a way out, writ ing to find something I didn’t know I was looking for. Maybe that is all that matters?

Li Yin ‘26 (ly104) has found some hidden gems after ignoring Yelp ratings and the stars on GoodReads.

BY LI YIN

What’s the difference between a 1 and a 10, anyways?

After a good cry from a scolding for being 2% away from 100%, for being one away from a five, I hold that gutting pain in my chest. It is at first blunt and piercing, but it slowly fades, and I let out a laugh. Every pore of my body, clogged by generational trauma, tightens. But laughter, and the boldness and unavoidance of its accompanying breaths, time and time again becomes another breath, becomes another step into clarity.

This time I laugh, because I find that as “laughter” is trapped in “slaughter,” “numb” is trapped in “numbers.” ***

Numbers, symbols with miniature right angles and smooth curves, would have no meaning otherwise, reflect only what we decide to impose. We pressure performance, value production, and ex pect perfection. We’re only worthy if we have this number of likes, this percent age of viewer engagement, this amount of reposts; we’re smart if we get a 36,

a 1500, a first place; we’re only beautiful if we’re a 10... We fall into place, fall into quantities, fall into capitalism’s ways and wishes. It’s so cruel, what we decide to do for no reason.

I catch myself falling, too.

I refuse to read books rated below four out of five stars on Goodreads. It’s crazy to me, how I say that I am my own person, I make my own decisions. And then there are the ratings, the key boards clattering, the thumbs ups and thumbs downs, the Yelps, the Rotten Tomatoes. Books nourish our minds, and food nourishes our bodies, yet we choose our nourishments based on how others fed themselves. Is there autono my at all when we assign a number, a critique, to everything we know?

***

Perhaps if physics has a study of thought and language, it would tell us that thought and language are the most miraculous translation from matter to

matter, medium to medium. Language literally turns the little sparkles made by your neurons, the complex, intangible, abstract, invisible beauty produced by your brain into something tangible— writing, word, hand motions. And this is passed onto another, becoming the little sparkles in another’s brain. The trend of our contemporary world, therefore, morphs from reality into the numerical values in our language.

So to undo it, we start by speaking differently. Don’t work your score on the SATs, your salary, your school rank ing into every conversation. Imperfec tion is okay, unrated matters are equally worth exploring. Don’t let the “numb” in “numbers” paralyze your expansive potential for change.

Li Yin ‘26 (ly104) has found some hidden gems after ignoring Yelp ratings and the stars on GoodReads.

A Declawed Cat

Content warnings: references to self-harm

Anger is a problem. And I treat anger as a terrible person would a cat—if claws scratch things, remove the claws; if anger breaks things, remove the anger.

You’re acting irrationally; you’re misin terpreting sadness and frustration as anger; your anger is a byproduct of healing; you’ve had a bad day and week and month and year, and you’re just tired. I need an explanation for every single emotion that everyone has ever felt in every moment. Because humans are rational and we have an equation and solution to most of the problems we study.

I’ve studied anger, seen it, felt it, heard it, tried it, and disliked it. I found the so lutions, meditated, journaled, exercised, talked, and disliked those, too. So I got rid of it (in theory) and thought myself a better person for it—better than any par ent, any past friend, and anyone who has ever been and ever will be angry—because relinquishing anger means I can control myself. I can filter my feelings into ratio nal or funny or casual comments.

So I’m fine with everything. I don’t ever get too angry or sad, I say dumb things for laughs, and I don’t take anything seriously. I’ve made myself comfort able with being the butt of the joke and taking it like a champ, and learned to re gurgitate the joke in my head afterwards just to figure out what was so funny about it. Really, if my mistakes and stumbles get a few laughs, then why not amplify that

silver lining?

You should go along with it when oth ers bring your embarrassments up, exag gerate and encourage those stories until your mistakes become you. Now you’re the funny friend, the one that isn’t able to—or at least isn’t willing to—have indepth conversations, but who keeps up their laughter or at least always smiles while they’re with you. This only works around half of the time, and when it doesn’t I pull out the age-old “I’m just tired” and reflect alone on what I could’ve done better.

During those (slightly self-gratifying) reflections I start to think I’m actually a very bland and negative person. And I worry that if I ever stopped the habit of laughing while talking, people around me would realise that too. The easiest way I’ve found to stop this from happening is to gloss over any anxiety, sadness, or irrita tion. So I’ll latch onto a joke even if it comes at the expense of my feelings, or I’ll play up my mistakes and “lightheart edness” to be more easygoing. A declawed cat learns to walk on deformed feet; a happy me learns to live on piecemeal emotions.

I’m incapable of true anger because I dissect the statement “I’m angry” into an infinite collection of causes, and pick at the pieces until I find one that’s satisfac tory. I can’t allow myself to be truly angry because I’m scared of what damage lies ahead. I play the memories of my parent’s

BY ANONYMOUS

anger in a A-Clockwork-Orange-style loop, so much so that even the thought of expressing dissatisfaction makes me feel guilty.

But I slip up anyway. Sometimes I’ll say something too loudly, with a little too much emotion and speed. My move ments become more jerky and stiff and my speech starts to stumble. My heart beats heavier but not necessarily faster. I start bouncing my feet, I scroll up and down my phone looking at the same im age, I count the number of red objects around me, I take sip after sip of any drink nearby, and I think of dead relatives, or at least something bigger than what I’m feeling now. In those moments I dread the potential realization that maybe anger is intrinsic to me.

There are many things I dislike that I want others to know about. Some of these are things that everyone seems to be mad at, like the sixth breaking news this week alone. Some complaints are pettier and more trivial than others, like how I hate loud talkers in the library. These are safe choices. The less safe ones are personal, ones that seem fine on most occasions but to me pick at some ancient scab. When someone once said I was a kind person, I felt the urgent need to correct them and stress how they should work on judging character. Another time, when someone asked about the scars on my skin, I de flected, but they kept asking until I felt like yelling at them to take a goddamn

Images: Canva

hint.

I’ve never actually yelled in anger, though. Nor have I ever told someone they were annoying me or making me sad, because all of those actions mean I’ve let my emotions overtake rationality. And I see that as incompetence. If ever I am more angry than happy, then I’ve failed to behave properly. I’ll feel like I’ve scaled hundreds of feet of mountains, just to stumble on a pebble and fall back to the mountain’s heel. Because even though I force myself to socialise equipped with only half the human emotions, I am ego tistical enough to think that my “good” half is sufficient.

Is it that the other half doesn’t deserve as much attention? Or is it because I’m afraid of what kind of attention it will re ceive? It’s difficult to shimmy in some ca sual sadness or anger between the chunks of generic jokes I throw out, hoping the latter will stick and not knowing what re sult I want for the former. One time, I snapped at a friend who’d been making fun of a mistake I made years ago, and felt so terrible afterwards that I apolo gized to them while affirming that, yes, I actually thought their joke was hilari ous. Another time I replied with “not so well” when someone asked how I was do ing, and I was at a loss when they asked if I wanted to talk. One of the worst mo when I broke down in a counsellor’s office, and had swer whether I’d thought of

hurting others or myself.

The statement “hurting others” is painful. That was the clearest moment where I felt ashamed to be sad and angry, because that implied my own feelings had the potential of hurting others: a burden to someone else whether I liked it or not. “Hurting myself” is something I can con trol, “hurting others” isn’t.

To overcompensate, I’ve equated al lowing others to hurt me to an altruistic yet selfish strategy. Altruistic because it means I’m forgiving others for hurting me when they may not have meant to, and selfish because I use this strategy to justify a personal free-pass: see how empathetic I am? How could I ever be capable of hurt ing someone else? And I hope this will lift anger’s weight off my shoulders.

But I often feel like a terrible and terri bly tired person anyways. Because even if I don’t act on my anger, I know it’s accu mulating. I also know the dam cracks sometimes to misplace that anger into my actions. And I don’t know what to do with this knowledge. But it’s good to at least have this awareness, and I try to accept rather than reject that more often.

A cat may spend hours cornering a bird just to find out that it can’t grip onto anything without its claws. But it’s come this far bearing the pain of deformed feet, so maybe it can go a bit further. If not, then maybe the next time. And so on.

iykyk

For information about publishing articles anonymously, please contact the Editors-in-

CAMPUS LIFE Dipping My Toes In

BY CAMRYN WARD

I’ve always imagined time as the sea. Calming yet restless, gentle yet powerful, something that you can never get ahold of. Always pushing forward, always moving, but most of all, inescapable. I felt the weight of time press on to me this past summer, frequently finding myself counting down the days until I could finally return to school and get back to planning my future. Those days time would blur and pass by me, but never fast enough. By the time summer was over, I came across this poem:

The Orange

By Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange— The size of it made us all laugh. I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park. This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy. I did all the jobs on my list And enjoyed them and had some time over. I love you. I’m glad I exist.

A poem about allowing yourself to soak up the present. It dawned on me that I had already let my summer pass me by. If time was the sea, I was a lonely onlooker, watching the tide. Occasionally turning my head, looking down, and walking away; the present was a stranger to me. It's easy to watch the crashing waves from afar, instead of submerging yourself and letting their chaos guide you. Or even being in still water. Arms stretched out, floating, ears under water so that all you can hear is your own breath.

Or maybe time is more like watching the rain from the quietness of a room, afraid of getting wet, waiting for the sun to come back out. I always get goosebumps when I hear the rain; it's like my body is standing at attention. Hyper aware of the presence of water, aching to go out. To feel the droplets on my skin, bathe in it, breathe it in, not

afraid if the sun doesn’t return.

This year, I’m making a point to follow this poem, and try to submerge myself in the present moment. Not just letting time pass by while counting the days until the unguaranteed future in which I am finally content, but allowing myself to find contentment in everyday things. Of course, that is easier said than done at a place like Wellesley: a school full of high achievers who pride themselves on internships, orgs, and work opportunities outside of school; where the future is the ruler of the present. I find myself on a campus surrounded by nature that so few people take time to bask in, a beautiful library where no one looks at the books, green lawns with chairs full of students with their laptops open and heads down.

Occasionally, I look back and wonder if I’ve been adhering to my goals, or if I’ve just convinced myself that I am, all the while drowning in my responsibilities. I recently got my answer on a particularly sunny fall afternoon. Walking back from my last class of the day, I planned to go inside and do the rest of my work before attending a career panel in a few hours. However, knowing that the weather was fleeting, I decided instead to head over to Tower Court lawn and bake in the sun. I ended up running into a friend, and then another friend soon after; while we didn’t end up sharing an orange, we did marvel over the orange-flavored frosting on the Tower cupcakes. Later, I took the long way to my career panel, letting the beauty of Lake Waban wash away the ever-

constant future in the back of my mind.

The lake has become a fixture in my mind as of late; I’ve come to appreciate its steady place in my days. It is so vast it’s almost inescapable. There are no churning waves, just the glassy surface of the calm and inviting water. I always walk by it, but now I never look away. Time slows down, and whatever blur that had surrounded me clears. Last year, I didn’t get to visit the lake as often as I would have liked to. But who knows, maybe this year I’ll be brave enough to dip my toes in.

Camryn Ward ’25 (cw105) has made unlikely companions with the swans on Green Beach as of late.

POETRY una extensión de un

sueño

BY ENTZU CHANG

días días que flotan en el cielo días que aparecen solo en tu sueño

cantamos en la primavera cantamos en el silencio las palabras vienen me recuerda el tiempo que reímos bromeas por las grietas lloras por el hielo ¿cómo describimos a los que vuelan sobre el estanque que disfrutamos?

a veces pienso en el lugar que escribimos con todos sentimientos ¿cómo pueden ser tan fuertes mientras son tan ligeros?

escucho el agua fugaz como el tiempo que corre rápido una nota me dejan luego se desvanecen en el flujo

de noche veo las estrellas ilustran esos momentos una y otra vez me dicen y siempre recuerdo recuerdo los días días siendo como el viento días que existen solo en tu sueño

Images: Canva

BY YITZEL SERNA

Images: Jennifer Long '25

Image: Yitzel Serna '26