By Danielle Lehsten
I met John Wong, a features editor with this newspaper, at a study break at Plimpton Hall. I was there to stock up on the free food and to "veg" out for a while, my brain being particularly fried that day. I don't remember the name of the band that played, but I remember them singing the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." I could identify with that song because at that point I would have sold my soul to the devil to ace physics. While the band took a break I overheard some students talking about science classes. I joined their conversation and asked them if they thought taking Electricity and Magnetism, Organic Chemistry, and Calculus III all together would be too much. They unanimously agreed that would be an extremely intense load, verging on the insane. If you have not guessed by now, I am a science nerd. Barnard is my college and chemistry is my major--that's if the pagan gods of science bestow their kindness upon me. I am not pre-med but I like to say that I am pre-scientist. John asked me to write for the Moment after he heard me paraphrasing Dr. Pagnotta's description of the difference between Barnard and Columbia. Pagnotta, Barnard's wild and wonderful organic chemistry professor, explained at a faculty and new student dinner that at Columbia the teachers throw the students into the water to see who can swim, but at Barnard the teachers throw the students into the water only to jump in themselves to make sure the students do not drown. These words comforted me at a time when I was not sure I should have transferred to Barnard from Hunter College. I am a simple, no fills person and a prestigious and privileged college like Barnard scared me to death. The main reasons I chose Barnard were its small class sizes, personalized attention, accessible teachers, good facilities, and most importantly, its support of women in the sciences. Barnard proved its strength in all those areas, even more so than I was prepared for. I can no longer disappear in the back of the class, avoiding any form of participation. One day only four other students showed up for my American literature class, and I cannot tell you how hard it was to discuss Puritan literature for an hour and a half with only five students. Every teacher knows my name and I swear my physics professor knew my name before I knew hers. There is also a certain amount of stress knowing that if you do poorly on a test or paper the teacher knows exactly who you are. I am no longer one of the nameless thousands, but an individual with an enormous amount of expectations to fulfill.
I do not want this column to be a pro-Barnard advertisement, but rather a pro-education and particularly a pro-science piece. I cannot let myself be proud to be a Barnard student, even though I often find that hard to do. Once I heard some Columbia women making disparaging remarks about Barnard, and all I could think about was the waste of mental energy the Columbia-Barnard tensions produce. I question any student who believes the quality of teaching at one college or another is better; anyway, how many different ways can PV=nRT be taught? That is why I love science; it is a universal language, and if extraterrestrial life exists, we will first communicate through science. Understanding how the universe functions is like communicating with God, and in fact, science is my God.
Here on the Barnard/Columbia campus, I have become aware of the need for many students to distinguish themselves by the college they go to, a "superiority trip," I call it. Also, if you read history you will find that different people are always trying to prove their superiority--remember World War II? In anthropology class I learned that this type of behavior, a hierarchical, elitist and "I'm better than you" behavior, has been going on since we were Australopithecines; however, we should fight our primal and innate tendencies and remember the words of John Lennon when he sang that we should be a people with no nation, and I add that we should be students with no college.
Barnard, Columbia, Hunter and any other college has both brilliant and terrible teachers, and the college you attend is just an expression of your preferences whether they be based on the "big name" or on a sincere desire to receive the best education possible. I would learn chemistry wherever I went to school, but I chose Barnard because its intense interest in instilling women with confidence in the sciences matches my love and devotion to learning chemistry. There is one thing, however, that I sometimes let myself be proud of, and that is being a science nerd. I cannot help but feel a tinge of pride when I recall the movie Revenge of the Nerds. At the film's end, nerds everywhere join together while the immortal words of Queen's Freddie Mercury are heard booming in the background: "We are the champions of the world!"