This is part of a poem that I wrote for class once. And this was about how, when I came to campus and I was going through a period of growth, which everyone constantly is, but spring washed away the snow, the newness of winter, and I became comfortable with growth. I locked my warm brown fur jacket from home in my suitcase. I didn't need it anymore. I tried to find warmth and people instead.
Everyone at Whitman has a story to tell. How they got here and what happened once they did. And every story is different. I'm Tejashree Jadhav, I'm from Pune, India. And this is Our Whitman, my story.
I came to be at Whitman College because I happened to study in this high school called United World College. It's called a college, even though it's high school. I studied in a United World College, which is located in Pune, which is also my city, so it was only two hours away. But those people helped me see that there was a possibility that I could come to the US to study in a liberal arts college. And they helped me know what my options were, and Whitman really stood out because I really liked the photos of the campus. Of course, I couldn't come here and see them in person, but the campus looked really pretty. I heard about the four seasons, which sometimes now I regret because the cold is also extreme and the hot weather is also extreme, which I don't know if I like extremes, but generally during spring, right now, it's getting very pretty.
I've never seen snow before in my life. So the first time I saw snow was just a week after I came here, it was really cold. Yeah. My roommate is from New York right now, and we have some troubles over the heat because she wants the heater off and I can't be without five blankets in my room.
So snow was really pretty. I think I would take my time, take the snow in my hands and then observe it because I've never seen it. It was really nice to see all the activities that were happening on campus with people building snowmen and different kinds of structures. I know there was this one event in Anderson where people were building snow igloos and stuff outside the building. I did not join in because I could not be... I was just watching from my window, because I was too cold to be out.
For a long time now, I've been confused between English and psychology as majors. So thinking about a lot of things, it hasn't been an easy decision, but I really like psychology. I think there's a lot I could do with that major and going forward, there are possibilities that I could go back to my hometown and work within the psychology department. Psychology generally is not taken as a good subject to study. Back home, everyone wants to be engineers and doctors and mental health is not really taken seriously, it's not acknowledged to be even something that should be given importance. If I could even just changed a little bit about that using my major and going forward and studying it more in grad school, I would be really be happy.
So the meeting I had before recording this, I had it with the same professor who has really impacted my one year at Whitman here, or I was in her class. Kirsten Nicholson, I was in Kirsten Nicholson's class for first-year seminar. And she really helped me a lot to know that I also have a place here in Whitman. Even though I am not exactly like all of my other classmates, I don't bring the same things to class, the same context, the same materials to class. She made it a point that I realized that even the things I brought to class were important enough, that the context I brought from India was important enough as we learned about climate change, and environmental problems. That's something that's really important as a student to feel that your teacher is seeing you amongst all these people.
I think it made me feel excited that there was so many things that now I could discuss with my classmates, that this thing that I was thinking, maybe that I would not be able to contribute as much to class. I could see that there was so much I could, and there was so much for me also learn from my other classmates about what happens in a US context and from my other international students who also bring such different backgrounds and contexts to Whitman.
Right now on campus, I live in the Writing House. So the Writing House is one of the 11 interest houses that Whitman has where people who are interested in writing, of course, share a house. Yeah, my housemates are also interested in different kinds of writings. I like various kinds of writings, but something I really like to do is write poems and also just write prose poems. I was home during my first semester at Whitman because of COVID and I was doing it online the whole semester and I saw an email about the poetry competition. So I applied for being in the first round of the poetry competition, which was just for Whitman students. I think I was second in that. So only one person could go forward, but I manifest. Sometimes people think it's really funny, but I think I believe in it and I don't want anyone to tell me that I should not.
The way I manifest is, I'll write it down on my books, I'll write it down on my phone that this is something it's not something I will get, but something I already have. And I wrote that I want to win this competition and then after the first competition, first round, when they technically told me that I couldn't go forward, I didn't really erase those things from my books, or like from the bulletin board in front of my table, it was still there. A week later, these people told me that you can come back in the competition for the next round, because we are sending three people from Whitman and not just the first person. So I competed in the second round and in the semi-finals and I competed in the finals. Even though I didn't win competition, I came second. Which made me believe in my manifestation powers more.
There's a lot I want to write about. But what I end up writing about in my poems is a lot about home, what situation I am in at that moment. Sometimes it's just a way to cope with everything that's going around me. Yeah, sometimes I see some something beautiful and I just want to write about that something. A lot of what I write is based on what I'm going through at that moment, or if it's in a class, based on the prompt that the teacher gives. This is part of a poem that I wrote for myself, but I later submitted it to a magazine on campus.
If I don't calm the storm inside of me, how will I ever calm the ones outside? If my mind restless always, never at peace. How do I call for peace in the world? So tonight I sit down and pen down, that the world is important, but so am I. And I tell you that the world is important, but so are you. And what is the human world? If not to 7.8 billion, smaller struggles combined together in a melting part of mysteries, love and hope.
This is part of a prose poem that I wrote for a theater project that I was doing with some friends at Whitman. I was doing it before I even came to Whitman, so from home.
I'm not the smooth surface, pure, like the stolen milk from your holy cow, straight like the ruler you hit me with every time I stepped out of line. I'm not the inside out, beautiful. Your remedy for the mess in your life, not the water for your toxic hiccups. You've swallowed me. I'm not your Cinderella at midnight. I've lost my pleasing shoes before the clock hit 12, before I was told, I had to be something, someone, for someone who will search nothing in me, but proofs of non-existent purity. Your eyes, your scornful stare has reached for my gut. I'm not your no more, but talk less woman. I'm not, I do not want to be.
I'm Tejashree and this has been Our Whitman, my story. There are more episodes of Our Whitman, my story, available right now, wherever you get your podcasts. For more information, go to whitman.edu/stories.
Music for this episode provided by the band, Wind Up Birds. Which is made up entirely of current Whitman College students.
