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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy May 12, 2004: From
a sprig has sprung . . . well, Kate by Jane Martin ’89 Kate Swearengen ’04. The byline was a slap in the face. Even though I’ve been reading Kate’s columns in PAW and online regularly, somehow those class numerals had slipped right past me until the April 21 On the Campus. If Kate Swearengen is in the Class of 2004, that means she’s graduating this year. And that means it was four years ago this summer that Lolly O’Brien, PAW’s managing editor, received a letter postmarked Columbia, Missouri. The letter said she was an incoming freshman. She’d read about PAW, and its unusual publication schedule, in the freshman handbook. And she had an idea: Wouldn’t it be swell if she were to write a column in every issue for the next four years? It would give alumni a week-to-week (or something like that) look at current Princeton life from a real, live student. Plus, she assumed, there would be fame, fortune, and job offers. She managed to be self-deprecating and self-assured at the same time – and she was funny. Lolly and I grinned at each other. Well, I grinned; Lolly doesn’t grin, she smiles with an endearing mix of excitement and anxiety. At any rate, Kate was hired. Over the last four years she has been better than her promise. From an incoming students’ picnic through academic angst, laundry woes, rowing crew, summer vacations, road trips, a new president, graduate student/undergraduate student interaction, social life, room draw, a semester abroad, eating clubs, celebrity sightings, parents, teachers, and friends, Kate has chronicled it all with smart insights and unfailing humor. And, dear to an editor’s heart, she has never missed a deadline. Whether struggling with a decision in what to major in or recovering from a broken wrist tended in an Egyptian hospital, Kate’s column has come through. Her very first column, September 13, 2000, set the tone, with a look at a picnic for incoming freshman held near her hometown. “Stanton was in Guatemala for a month with the Franciscans, but his parents came to the party anyway,” she began. “At the very moment that I was sucking the milk-chocolate coating off a strawberry, Stanton was fending off giant tarantulas and learning how to wash his clothes in a river.” A year later she was applauding the reopening of the Garden movie theater: “Princeton has made me smarter. It’s given me new friends, not to mention a new appreciation for corn-fed Midwestern boys. Sadly, it hasn’t allowed me to maintain the level of cultural literacy to which I’m accustomed. Sure, it’s great to live on a campus that houses a Picasso sculpture and Toni Morrison. But where’s the multiplex?” She went on: “I know, I know, I should read the newspaper, right? Well, I have a subscription to The New York Times, but by the end of the day, Section A is sopping up grease from a Zorba’s gyro, and I still don’t know what’s going on in the Balkans.” The first semester of Kate’s junior year saw her studying at the American University in Cairo. Her adventures included border difficulties, Arab-American relations, trying to score a refrigerator for her dorm room, the aforementioned broken wrist, and getting lost, many times. In Bulaq, she wrote, “I feared I would get lost in its tangle of mud streets and be eaten by a goat, of which there were many. There was also a flock of bold geese that almost knocked me over. I ran into an 8-year-old boy on the way out of Bulaq – young boys here like me because I leap over road barricades and yell back at them in Arabic when they shout Hallo at me. I had a pretty decent Arabic conversation with him. I finally asked him where the American University was, and he said: “Al Gamiyya Al Amrikiyya? Masha’allah.” (The American University? Whatever God wills.)” Back on campus for her last three semesters, Kate tackled her return, class, more travel, and her thesis. “My thesis is due on May 3, the same day as the deadline for physics theses, a synchronicity that reaffirms a deeply held personal belief that Near Eastern Studies is a science, not an art,” she writes. More important than the work, however, is the departmental T-shirt handed out upon completion of the thesis. “My department is still struggling with a T-shirt design. The inability of five undergraduates and a small faculty to agree on a common theme is troubling considering that many of us may one day do diplomatic work in that part of the world. Our first suggestion -- “I tried to establish democracy in the Middle East and all I got was this lousy T-shirt” — was shot down by the departmental representative, a Turkish professor who said that if the T-shirt had Arabic, it had to have Turkish and Persian and Hebrew, too. The second suggestion — “Q: Where’s Osama? A: In Firestone with the infidels!” — did not fly at all.” For Kate, fame has meant e-mails from assorted parents, alumni, students, and other crackpots, fortune a small pittance to spend on hoagies and pizza, and job offers – well, she’s headed to graduate school next year. For us, though, four years of “Raising Kate” has been pure pleasure and lots of laughs. I often respond to query letters with a phrase that can be a little empty. But I hope Kate knows I mean it sincerely when I say: Thanks for writing. The entire collection of “Raising Kate” can be found
online just below this column. Read and enjoy. Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu Raising Kate Archives, Volume 04:
Raising Kate Archives, Volume 03:
Raising Kate Archives, Volume 02:
Raising Kate Archives, Volume 01:
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