Coronavirus is rapidly changing society as we know it, and we at Wesleying want to know how it’s specifically impacting your relationships with those you love. Fill out this form and tell us about any and all of the changes that are happening between you and your significant other, parents, friends, siblings, hookups, teachers, pets, beloved inanimate objects, and everything in between. Your story will be part of an upcoming article!
Welcome to the sixth installment of Ask Wesleying, an advice column about any and all things Wes! Have a question about life at Wes? Submit it to get it answered in Ask Wesleying! You can find all of the Ask Wesleying columns here.
This week’s question is about intimacy of the emotional variety:
Dear Wesleying,
I feel like Wesleyan’s culture encourages shallow relationships. I find little emotional intimacy in my relationships here. Is this a Wesleyan thing or a me thing?
Sincerely,
Feeling Isolated
You can read the answer to this week’s question below the jump!
From Heather Miura ’14:
Do you want to learn a little more about your relationships with friends and significant others? Why not be paid to do so? Participate in the online Relationships and Emotions Study for Heather Miura ‘14’s senior thesis and receive $10 compensation for 45 minutes-1 hour of your time. All responses will be anonymous. Fill out a quick questionnaire by linking to the participation form to see if you’re an eligible candidate. We will be contacting you within a week of your submission with further instructions to proceed with the study.
The participation form closes on December 15, 2013.
Tomorrow (Thursday) from 7 – 9 PM in Bennett (long live Fauver) Lounge, Rosy Capron ’14 and Brendan O’Donnell ’14 will be facilitating the final Privilege and Policy at Wesleyan discussions. The topic this week will be sex, gender, and relationships at Wesleyan.
Things that might come up include male-female ratios of faculty and students in different departments, treatment of male vs. female sports teams, gendered spaces (bathrooms, program houses, Greeks) on campus, the queer community, the privileging of males over females in admissions, services provided (or not provided, or costs not covered) at the Health Center for trans* students, treatment of queer students by faculty, staff, and students, sexual assault, and anything else you would like to discuss.
Please join us this evening for the discussion!
Date: Thursday Nov 7
Time: 7PM to 9PM
Place: Bennett Freshman Fauver Lounge
Some wise words from our Sexual Violence Resource Coordinator, Alysha Warren:
We grow and evolve throughout our lives. Along with these personal shifts come shifts in our relationships –- we transition in and out of romantic relationships, becoming closer with some friends and drifting away from others. Although this is a common experience, transitions can be painful. Come join us in an interactive discussion about picking up the pieces and moving forward, evaluating lessons learned and answering the age old question, “Can we still be friends?”
Place: Downey House Lounge
Date: Wednesday, October 24
Time: 7-8:30 pm
Facilitators: Alysha Warren, CAPS Extern Amy Marschall and you
Facebook Event
From Cory Meara-Bainbridge ’13 and DKE and Beta and Womanist House and Well Being House and pretty much every other group on campus this side of Art House:
Come join Beta, DKE, Womanist House, Women of Color House, Well Being House, ASHA, and SFCC as we bring many voices together to engage in dialogue around what it means to have healthy relationships, led by Tanya Purdy from WesWell and Alysha Warren from CAPS.
Date: Monday, October 10
Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Place: Beta (184 High Street)
This past February, the New York Times Sunday Styles section held a college essay contest centered on the topic of modern collegiate romance — a phenomenon increasingly characterized by navigations of emotional meaning in the wake ever-advancing digitization of relationships. From over 1400 meditations and reflections on this theme, one winner, four runners-up, and an additional five notable mentions were selected, including a piece by Wes’s own Lindsay Abrams ’12. Considering the volume of submissions, that’s a feat worthy of some big ups indeed.
A list of other distinguished submitters can be found at the link above. The winning entry, written by Caitlin Dewey of Syracuse University, is available for your perusal in the NYT Styles section; a list of participating institutions can be found here. Happy reading, y’all.
I got interested in the College of Social Studies (CSS) my freshman year because I was dating a CSS boy. As it turns out, the major was a much better choice than the boy.
This week’s Monday lunch talk is on education and development in Rwanda, by Michael Brotchner, CSS ’95, Executive Director of Orphans of Rwanda. Again, that’s noon on Monday March 3, in the Woodhead Lounge.
More information on the CSS can be found here, and Applications are due March 28.
(from xkcd)
So every summer there comes a time when a whole bunch of new kiddies come to Wesleyan and a whole bunch of older kiddies leave. Summer, then, is a transitional time for a lot of people and it often calls for the geographic displacement of close friends to be sucked up by schools in other time zones or *gasp* tiny, tiny cubicles in big, big buildings in cities far away.
And with the advent of Facebook, many of these kids say to themselves, “Hey, we’ll be in touch, there’s always Facebook!” Yeah huh.
Facebook sucks for bonding. I’ve railed against it before as a really poor substitute for social engagement, but I can’t emphasize this enough: DO NOT RELY ON FACEBOOK TO KEEP IN TOUCH. Facebook is only good for one of three things: 1) looking up someone mentioned in conversation who you do not know, 2) graffiti and 3) leaving totally non-committal “let’s hang!” notes on people’s walls.
Right. So with that said, Facebook is lame. Except for graffiti. Graffiti will revolutionize the entire internet. Just like The Two Coreys will revolutionize television. You’ll see.
Ok, back to my point. So what do you do when friends move away?
I’m not the best phone chatter. In fact, when I look at my monthly cell phone statement, on my family plan of my brother, my grandmother and I, both my brother and my grandmother outtalk me. Which is both revealing of my character and lends credence to my theory that gram is actually a neo-soviet spy using my unused minutes to contact the mother country.
But I do manage to keep in touch with a lot of friends scattered now all over the country via snail mail. And I can’t recommend this enough. Email gets curt and trite after a while. “Hey, sorry I haven’t written in a while, I’ve been busy! Studying lots! Are you busy? Studying? Yeah, I hear you. Anyway, I gotta go. Test tomorrow.” And then they gradually become less and less frequent and three years later you ask yourself, “Hey, didn’t I used to be friends with that girl?”
Right, so tip #2, (after not relying on facebook) is not to rely on email. Email is fine for aunts you see once every three years, but I can’t remember the last time I got really excited to get a long email.
So tip #3, my best tip, is to invest in snail mail. At school (or alone in your apartment after taking a new job) receiving letters, postcards and tiny packages can make all the difference between a really crappy day and a pretty good one. Things to consider picking up the next time you’re out:
