Part XIV -- College Edition

Letter from Wellesley 1945

The Bea Blog consists of diaries and letters written by my grandmother Bea Cohen Rubin (1899-1985) and other members of her family. For more information about Bea and how this blog came about, see Part I -- Intro and 1913 under Blog Archive.

My mother Ande Rubin (right) and her best friend Bernice Richman in their senior year at Horace Mann High School for Girls, 1943

My mother Ande Rubin (Bea’s daughter) attended Wellesley for her freshman and sophomore years, from 1943 to 1945. She transferred to Barnard in 1945 and graduated in 1947. She was very unhappy at Wellesley and she wrote a number of angry -- yet also funny -- rants citing Wellesley’s flaws. (It probably didn’t help that Ande's best friend from high school was at another college, and Ande's sister Jean, a junior at Wellesley when Ande arrived, loved Wellesley and was successful there both academically and socially.)

Soon after her 19^th birthday in March 1945, Ande writes to her mother Bea:

Today, I practically died – quite literally. In Badminton class, we have to jump rope for about 10 minutes continuously – I feel absolutely ill afterwards. I get completely winded and my heart just goes a mile a minute. I see no reason to force myself to do this outrageous stuff when it has such an appalling effect on me and can do me nothing but harm. I am sure it will take 3 years off my life (that’s no fooling).

She illustrates her point with a cartoon:

Among Ande’s other complaints are what she sees as lack of intellectual rigor among her classmates and the failings of her English professors:

Mr. Houghton, though I don’t dislike him, makes me so mad. He told me yesterday that “the course was failing me” and that although I did very well on my tests, that he was sure I didn’t think in general or have intellectual interest. WELL! I told him right there and then that one of my objections to Wellesley was that I felt so many of the girls have acquired information, yes, but that they didn’t actually think and that by God, I did! No one can tell me I don’t think because what gets me so is that most of the people around here don’t think one tenth as much as I do. Then he tells me he has been speaking to Mr. Kirby-Miller who has told him how difficult I was last year. When I think of what KM did to my English and his complete lack of appreciation for anything that was even slightly imaginative or subtle, it makes me sick but what could I say to Mr. Houghton? Then he holds [Classmate X] up to me as an example – how she always talks in class, thinks, etc. so I said, “Mr. Houghton, one has to take into consideration difference in personalities” because I am seriously not disposed towards talking in class and that’s no barometer of intelligence or lack of it  (and I “think” every bit as much as [Classmate X] and possibly a little more and I’d take ten of me to her any day, even if that does sound awful). There is a certain kind of personality that is appreciated by Wellesley – a sort of eager, exuberant, enthusiastic, superficial, naïve kind that I am NOT and since Wellesley can’t change me and I can’t change Wellesley, it’s all pretty frustrating.

“Mr. Kirby-Miller” and “Mr. Houghton” were English professors Charles Kerby-Miller and Walter Houghton.

Ed. Note: When I was applying to colleges in 1978, my grandmother Bea told me several times that Ande was so happy to transfer from Wellesley to Barnard,  that “Barnard could do no wrong.”