Student Voices: Jeanne Kay Class of 2010
"Oh my God, this is a miracle
happening to me."
When I was 18, I went to live on a
sailboat with my dad, and we crossed the Atlantic and the Panama Canal, and
when I was in French Polynesia I started my studies by correspondence so I did
mail school to finish...and when I was in Singapore a year after that I actually
flew back to France to take my exam...I was thinking "what shall I do next?" and
I was thinking about American colleges because French University...is entirely
pre-professional, you have to know what you want to do right away, there is no
community spirit. It's not about getting a wide cultural background; it's about
getting the courses you need for your degree and nothing else.
So I ordered college guides from
Amazon, and one day I get this huge package of college guides, and I know
absolutely nothing about American universities and colleges, I didn't even know
the difference between a liberal arts college and a big public university. When
I got to the Antioch
page, I closed the book, and I said "I'm going there."
It was portrayed differently from
everything, it wasn't so bright and shiny, it had a genuine quality to it. It
also said that the student body was extremely political. I came for the
culture, mostly. It talked about Antioch's
traditions... it also said that people were extremely friendly. Mostly what
attracted me was the kind-of anarchist-like setting and that it wasn't
anarchist in the chaotic, completely all over the place way, but rather a place
where people have a lot of freedom, use it wisely, and use it in order to
achieve political goals.
I went online the same day, filled
it out the online application in 20 minutes and I sent it right away. It was a
short essay [laughs]. I thought it was too late, but at that time I was
already talking to everyone: "I found this place. You know, you have no idea. I
found the place for me, and I'm going there, and even if they don't want me,
I'm going to call them and harass them and tell them 'You need to let me in
this year!' and I'm going to go there and camp in front of their admissions
office if they don't want me, and I'm going there." People were tired of
hearing about Antioch
every day. Even the bakery person in the village was like "So have you heard
from Antioch
yet?"
I was extremely afraid of co-op.
Co-op terrified me. I hoped they would cancel it when I got there. And now, I'm
on co-op! I'm editing The Record. I look forward to my next co-op,
even if it's abroad. I think that just one year at Antioch has given me
the skills that I lacked before which made me fear co-op. Antioch
is not easy, and you learn a lot of self-reliance, and you learn to adapt and
make any part of the world and any situation your own. I think I'm ready
to do that in the outside world.
Well, I'm a second-year, so I've
taken two Cores (ed note: Cores are the terms for the learning communities
of the Renewal curriculum). I've taken Sense of Place, which was a
great introduction to Antioch
and to higher education, because it really tackled problems from the
perspective of both economics and environmental studies. And art, and
philosophy. So it was a way to see the world in a complex way that is really
good to develop a political mind. I also took Revolutions, which was
also a great introduction to Antioch
and where I found the radicalism that I was looking for when I first applied.
Antioch was such a miracle for me, that
for it to close, is just inconceivable. I had been given this amazing
thing, that had opened my life in so many ways, and during the summer break,
when I was back home, I could say "nothing matters, I'm going back to
Antioch."
I want to come back to the
friendliness of people. I've been really fighting the whole toxic culture theory.
I moved a lot, I went to a lot of different high schools, middle schools, grade
schools. It was a jungle for me, these places. I was never safe. I always had
to look behind me. And here, I feel so safe.
I will always remember a time,
when we watched a video in class, about children who had deformations because
of the Chernobyl
accident in Russia.
I started crying in class. If something like that had happened in any other
school I had been to before, I would have been either completely ignored or laughed
at, or someone would have said "well, you shouldn't cry, because..." But here at
Antioch,
I had my entire class stand up, surround me, hug me, some started crying too,
and told me "Don't worry, that's why we're here; So that we can change that."
It was very early in my first year, and that was really the time when I thought
"Oh my God. This is a miracle happening to me."
