This week, we're taking a little detour. Partially because I want to keep you guys on your toes, but also because I don't want the fun to run out too soon. We'll be back next week with a new unexpected treat.
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In honor of back to school season, and Brenau's first week of classes coming up on Monday, I thought I'd share a little Brenau story with you.
As a kid, I was often told I was "too emotional" and "overdramatic" and that I often needed to "calm down." These are all probably true statements about my normal state of self, but as a kid it angered me (and usually made the situations worse) that people didn't either care about my emotions or understand that emotions are kind of my thing. I tried really hard to get those feels in check, but I usually failed. This failure directly relates to my time at Brenau - we'll get there in a sec.
I spent an awful lot of time in the Brenau University archives as a college student. So much time, actually, that my name was permanently added to (and still is on) the list of people allowed in the archival room in the Trustee Library.
I didn't really care much about history until I stepped foot on Brenau's Gainesville campus. The very first time, on Winter Weekend, I felt like my eyes were as wide as saucers, trying to absorb every detail. The campus felt so big, and I felt so small.
By the time my senior year rolled around, it felt the opposite. I was known on campus as "The Girl that Knows Everything" and would happily answer Brenau history questions when approached by strange freshmen, or know where to get the information for the answer, or tell the ghost story that went along with it. Loving Brenau's history put me in a place I had never been with my peers and I liked it.
I learned those stories and legends while in the Archives. There was no feeling like walking through that door and seeing the vintage couch and marble table, a display I had set up from my sorority's centennial in 2010, yearbooks starting in 1900 (the very first year!) and hundreds of photographs, course catalogs, and old Alchemist issues.
That feeling - it was an intense range of emotions. I remember feeling a deep sadness after finding a letter by President T.J. Simmons, written after his wife died, about how he would build a YMCA building in her honor, because she loved the YMCA group and truly believed in it. I cried (maybe out of guilt) when I realized that not only was the building - my favorite one on campus - a beautiful art gallery now, but the thing Lessie loved so much hadn't been on campus in decades.
As a freshman, I remember easing my anxiety pre-recruitment by looking through the old Bubbles yearbooks of Brenau girls past, realizing that one day, people would look at my yearbook and think exactly what I was thinking.
It's not all melodramatic - I remember a lot of joy, excitement and pride. Those were the emotions I felt most often. Like when I looked at smiling faces in photographs, recognizing those women later at May Day weekend, or when I found the answer to a question I had been long asking, or when I found an old student handbook, detailing unusual rules or school uniform requirements and student fees that were under $10! Or, the general fact that I was trusted to be in the same room with the Dare Stones by school officials (More on the Dare Stones later in this series!)
And then there were the strange, odd, random feelings - it wasn't quite disgust, but it wasn't quite hilarity when I found a singed piece of wood that at one point was part of a totem pole on campus, made from a petrified tree. The tree had been hit by lightening and caught fire, and what was left was an odd piece of burned, petrified wood, painted to look like a raven, in a plastic bag.. I felt the need to touch it. It felt funny, and frankly, it stank a little. I had more fun retelling that story than I did finding the artifact.
Or how about the random clothing that gets donated to the archives. Sometimes sweatshirts or t-shirts but there were vintage shoes and other accessories floating around. There was also a vintage typewriter a student had used during her time, and eventually was donated. Cornerstones of old dorms that are no more. A delicately carved antique hutch, holding a dozen beer steins from over the years.
Some of my favorite school memories include being in the Archives, or sharing the Archives, or excitedly coming back to my sorority house and telling my sisters something I learned in the Archives. And it has benefited me later in life, as Brenau prepares to open a Jacksonville campus, I can recall fondly the scrapbook of Brenau Alabama - a women's college purchased in 1905 that tumbled during the Great Depression - and think about how joyful the founders would be, to know their dream of forming women's colleges all along the Chattahoochee was remembered and modified just so. And, as new sorority houses are built, how sorority girls in the 1920's must have rejoiced to have a home to call their own instead of the club houses scattered around Gainesville, or in the 1960's when more additions were built on to accommodate growth.
I think the feelings I get - and relate to, after 136 years - when I read these stories is what I like about my college's history the most. And that's where my overdramatic, extra-emotional, needs-to-calm-down self felt the most at peace. In the Archives, feeling a vast range of emotions was an overall pleasant experience. I knew exactly what I was getting myself in to and I consider it an exercise in emotional health.
The point is, there is something out there that you will become passionate about, and it will make you feel things. My advice? Let it.
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Join me next week as I lace up my walking shoes and hit the Gainesville Square and Rock Creek Greenway and tour the solar system! Well, a scale model of the solar system, a walking project set up in 1998 by the North Georgia Astronomer's Group. I'll admit I've walked it before, and I'm excited to learn more about it and share the details with you!
Until then, stay curious.
This article scratches the surface of my overdramatic and theatrical life, whether or not I'm completely crazy is up to you. The comments made in this feature article, by myself and by those who have been mentioned or quoted, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Jacobs Media Corporation. Read, enjoy and explore at your own risk.
