Somya

So, this marks my first Feministing blog post. My name is Somya, (pronounced So?-me-uh) and I’m a rising sophomore at Bowdoin College. I’m a Government & Legal Studies major (which is the Bowdoin way of saying Political Science), with a potential Gender & Women’s studies minor.

For an obscure liberal arts school, Bowdoin is teeming with an extraordinary amount of jocks and people who wish they were jocks. In any case, we take pride in our sports, our food (number #1 college dining!), and the fact that everybody is from ‘just outside Boston.’ Bowdoin is located in the city of Brunswick, Maine. It doesn’t matter that the trees outnumber people, or the tallest building is 9 stories high – the fact that Brunswick has over 500 people in it makes a city, by Maine standards. All things aside, though, Bowdoin is a great school, and I’ve loved being in Maine – where people actually stop and let you cross the street without trying to run you over (hint: you could learn a few Maine tricks New York drivers).

As a college freshmen, I discovered, to my horror, that I was much more naive than I’d expected. During my first semester, I enrolled in Sociology 101, taught by a professor who I hated, and was a self-described feminist – not that those two things are related, of course. It was her class that inducted me into feminism. We spent entire classes discussing how women ...