“I was forced to lock in on the final day of Thanksgiving Break, since my Econ presentation for Monday creeped up on me  which I felt was unfairly timed. All I thought about on my bus ride back to Boston was how I will present in class the following day and the excitement from the previous few days of my trip seemed to fizzle away.”

Manya Anandi ’26 (she/her) 

“For me, this was a very well timed break because all of my midterms finished right before and my professors finished teaching all new material before I left campus. I can now spend the next two weeks preparing for finals. Thanksgiving was very conveniently segmented because it gave me the time to rest before diving into this very intense period. And since there are only two weeks left in the semester, I am ready to take on the intensity because I know there is another break coming up very soon.”

Ishita Bhargava ’27 (she/her)

“As an international student on campus during Thanksgiving, it was a relief to find resources like Slater offering a home away from home at a time when I saw everyone heading home to celebrate with their families. Slater also organised a Friendsgiving dinner for those who missed out on spending time with their loved ones which was really nice.”

Saanvi Rungta ’26 (she/her) 

“I was travelling back to campus from break when I realised that the travel signature on my I-20 form was outdated. I frantically emailed Slater and was relieved to find that they responded within a few hours. I am so grateful that Slater pulled through and I got to walk out of Logan without getting detained…”

Sanika Merchant ’25 (she/her) 

“Thanksgiving break was a lovely time, as I got to meet my high school friends. However, the last two weeks of school are very stressful, since I need to wrap up classes, submit my assignments, and prepare for finals in a span of two weeks. One of my professors also changed the date for my final a few days ago, which has added to the uncertainty and academic pressure.”

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Phoebe Rebhorn and Diya Khanna

The Wellesley News interviewed two dining hall workers, Claudia Gonzalez and Roselle (Rosie) Andre, to shed light on the humans behind the counters.

Claudia Gonzalez (GSW Worker)

Claudia Gonzalez has worked at Wellesley College for nearly five years. She spent her first two years at the College Club, providing for functions and reunions, before moving to the Stone-Davis kitchen amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I used to work there [the College Club], and then they moved me because they closed that place, so I had to choose which kitchen [to move to], and I chose to come here [to Stone-Davis],” Gonzalez said.

As a General Service Worker (GSW), Gonzalez washes pots and pans and sometimes takes on the role of general cook.

“I’m very happy with the job. Seriously. I mean, the pots and pans are very hard and it’s not an easy job, but I mean, I like it. I came here happy, and that’s what I tell my coworkers. You have to like what you do, and so far I like it,” Gonzalez said.

A large source of Gonzalez’s contentment comes from her daily interactions with students. She specifically notes her pride in connecting with students from El Salvador, her home country, from which she came 21 years ago at age 16.

“I have many [students], who you know, are my friends. I get to know this one especially because she’s from my country, the only Salvadorian I know that comes to this college. Her name is Elizabeth. I’m very proud that she’s here,” Gonzalez said.

Outside of work, Gonzalez enjoys spending time with her two daughters, Zoe and Giselle, aged six and 16. Gonzalez’s sister and mother help take care of Zoe and Giselle when she is working from Tuesday through Saturday.

“I like to go out with my daughters to the restaurants, to the mall … Giselle’s very mature. She’s a very good girl, very, very smart … I’m very comfortable working because I know my daughters are good and somebody is with them,” Gonzalez said.

Moving forward, Gonzalez has hopes of earning a display cook qualification to achieve a new position in the kitchen.

“You have to take a test, you have to study, you need to know a lot of cooking stuff, so that way you can go to a different position … For example, to work at the pizza station, you need to have the display cook qualification, you’re not gonna see a GSW cooking over there, so that’s what I’m trying to do,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez’s aspirations stem from her desire to do her best work along with her optimistic outlook on life. Ultimately, Gonzales emphasizes that her goal is to provide for students and to be there for them.

“We all try hard here to have all the food ready and good, you know? Hopefully you guys enjoy it because we’re here for you guys. Seriously, we are, and we try our best for you. That’s what we do,” Gonzalez said.

Roselle Andre (Head Cook)

Roselle, or Rosie, Andre is the head cook of the Stone-Davis kitchen. In a little over a month, on Nov. 25, she will have worked at the college for 18 years. She has worked in the Stone-Davis kitchen for the past six years.

“I came here [to America] in 2001. I started at Ruby Tuesday … then moved to another job, Roche Bros, here in Wellesley. Then I heard about Wellesley College … and then I started as third cook [in 2005] … and now I am a head cook here [at Stone-Davis],” Andre said.

When Andre first moved to America from Brazil, she had a difficult time learning English. However, she held faith in herself and persisted through the challenges of living in a foreign country.

“To be honest, English for me when I started was very difficult. I learn, I study, I know I have a lot more to learn. So I know I do not have a perfect English … This is very difficult for me … I was thinking about giving up on my first month working here and then I talked to myself and said, ‘No, I’m not gonna give up. I can do it. A lot of people can do it, why I cannot do it?’ And then I did it. I did. 18 years,” Andre said.

Now, Andre finds immense joy in her job, especially in working with the people — whom she refers to as friends — in the Stone-Davis kitchen.

“I love it here, especially the people, the coworkers. We like each other. We work as a team. We help each other,” Andre said.

Furthermore, working at a historically women’s college is an enriching experience that fills Andre with a sense of duty.

“Being at a women’s college is very important. I’m a feminist. I fight for our rights. It’s very important for everyone to have rights and to treat us with respect … It’s important for men and women to have the same level, as a job, as a human being,” Andre said. “When I got this job it made me so happy, so happy, because especially I believe in us. I believe in women and our power.”

Looking back at her time at Wellesley, Andre reflects proudly on the progress she has made, both personally and professionally.

“See[ing] how I became the woman that I became since I started working here, I changed a lot for good. Especially because I’m feeding people. It is important for me … In my last kitchen, Bates, I was a second cook, and I started at Caz[enove] … as a third cook, so the one thing that makes me so proud is how I grow here. It makes me so proud,” Andre said.

Her love for feeding students is evident in her ability to recall specific moments when students enjoyed her food. Andre especially takes pride in cooking traditional Brazilian meals such as feijoada, frango com quiabo, and fish stew.

“The first time I cooked feijoada here, I saw girls came and checked the sign. It makes me so happy … They came up with a small plate, and they put a little bit and then later on they came back and have a big plate!” Andre said.

In her free time, she stays home, or spends the day at the movie theater, going from movie to movie, or watches sports.

“If I was staying in Brazil today, I would like to … write about sports … I used to play soccer in college, [and] I was very good in volleyball. I watch every, all kinds of sports,” Andre said. 

Andre’s passion for  life extends well beyond the Stone-Davis kitchen, and she expresses a particular devotion to the women in her life. In referring to Claudia Gonzalez, Andre deems her ‘her best friend.’

“She’s my best friend. She’s my best friend. We help each other. Especially for the girls. Yeah, we don’t do it for us. This is very important. This is very important. We do it for you girls,” Andre said.

Emma Sullivan ’24 (they/them)

CAREER EDUCATION

“Wellesley is my home, but I also worked on Wellesley Career Education’s first-year retreat, Embark!, and I designed programming for them, which I do all year round. … It was actually the first time I had ever shot with a professional camera for a job, so that was super exciting. My boss is a photographer, so I got a little support with that, and even though they were not happy to see me photographing them and chasing them around with my camera, it was really fun to talk to the first-years.

“[It was] super quiet [on campus]. I got all the snow when I came back; I’m pretty sure it was snowless until I came back on the 6th [of January]. But [it was] dead quiet until the moment you decided that you were hungry enough to walk all the way to Bates and then you saw everyone you knew all at once. Everything, everywhere, all at once.”

Gabrielle Shell ’24 (she/they)

MOROCCO: Language and Culture (MES 270) with Professor Rachid Idir Aadnani

“A huge thing that I think I’ve been learning throughout this year … it’s really not that hard to communicate with people that you don’t share that much language with. Going into the trip, I was nervous about living in a host family where I didn’t really know if I was going to be able to really speak to them at all. … But, I was able to create a real relationship … Even though it was the thing I was most nervous about … it ended up being my favorite part of the trip, and the thing that I learned the most from and cherished the most were those connections that I made, especially with my host mother and my host sister.

“We had some really interesting conversations about the place of women in Morocco and just hearing from normal Moroccan women was really cool. … And in general, just getting out of my comfort zone in a way that I feel a lot more comfortable doing other things moving forward. … On our trip, we had such a mix of levels of Arabic or levels of travel experience, and it really seemed like … everyone had a really good time and I think everyone was nervous going into it. … It’s also a really great experience that I would never have the opportunity to travel for almost three weeks in that way, so I’m really happy I went.”

Marty Martinage ’24 (they/them)

RUSSIAN: Elementary Russian I (RUS 101) with Professor Thomas Hodge

“On the first day, [Professor] Hodge was like, ‘Guys, this is probably going to be one of the most difficult things you ever do in your academic career,’ and I was like, ‘It can’t be that hard.’ And then, I was crying over basic grammar rules. … But I ended up loving it and … I feel so good about the choice to take Wintersession Russian. … I think this is what I’m gonna do with my entire grad school track, so they’ve won me over. The Russian department has really got [sic]their teeth into me. … One of those things that I really love about our Russian department is that it’s a lot of people who have spent their lives studying literature and the way that people communicate feelings and desires and needs in literature, and it’s a group of really compassionate educators. … Even in elementary Russian, there were little bits and pieces of this language that’s become highly politicized. … The way that individual words that … you learn in grade school as a Russian kid have taken on this, like, huge, weird socio-political legacy, like that’s something that we talked about and that Hodge left a ton of space for us to talk about. I’m very proud to be a part of that community [the Russian department]. The way that that community engages with the work that we do and the things that we’re studying is really thoughtful.”

Cynthia Gomez ’24 (she/her/hers)

Studying in Córdoba, Spain as part of PRESHCO (Programa de Estudios Hispánicos en Córdoba.) 

“One of the classes I’m taking is archaeology. I really like it because we get to go on excursions and we get the opportunity to see Roman ruins … There is this one store that I go to here called Bershka and our professor once said ‘hey, let’s go to Bershka,’ and we asked, ‘are you gonna go shopping?’ And they said ‘No, there’s ruins down there.’  It’s crazy because there’s definitely a lot of history here. There are ruins everywhere but people wouldn’t even know about it unless they are an archaeology major or something. And I am majoring in Biology so this was really interesting to me.”

Isabel (Isa) Martinez ’24 (she/her/hers) 

Studying in Bologna, Italy 

“The way that university works in Italy is very different because … it’s not really a four year program, it’s however long it takes you to finish your classes, which for someone, could be three and for others, it could be seven. It really depends on what their lifestyle is and how many classes they want to take. Whatever your program is, it has different requirements, so there’s a lot of people of different ages taking classes and they’re really big classes in auditoriums. It is very different from Wellesley and I wanted to have a different experience outside of Wellesley for my college experience.

“My favorite part [about the program] so far is the balance of social life and academics because at Wellesley, I feel our student life is very academically focused and then everything else is kind of on the side. But in this program, it is very much about your social life, and your interests are kind of centered around it … I definitely spend a lot of time with my friends like going out to dinner, going out to bars. We also spend time together studying, but I think it’s just a much healthier work life balance, and the people in the program are awesome. There’s about 24 of us and we all get along really well.”

Izzy Liu ’24 (she/her/hers) 

Studying at Oxford University 

“What is great about the visiting student program at Oxford is that it’s very intercollegiate because while we apply to particular colleges under University of Oxford, we’re all cross connected amongst each other … We take classes with people at Hartford College that come from different universities apart from Wellesley, and we’ve all become really close friends. So we’ve developed not only a social network but a network that allows us to ask questions and answer them. So you can get to know what’s up with the social calendar that week or how to pick up your mail or go about shipping something to myself.

“In addition, the support system at Oxford is great. They are really dedicated to making our stay as smooth and comfortable as possible, whether that is the visiting student director or what’s called the Porter’s Lodge which is sort of like the front desk equivalent of a hotel to answer any questions you might have.”

Danielle Ellis ’25

“Right now, [working at Mail Services] is a little stressful, but usually it’s just very fun for me. It’s obviously work … but I look forward to going to work most days because the people really make it fun. I worked there this summer. We would listen to music, and we would have informal dance breaks if there was no one there and we’d already scanned everything in and that would be really fun. Just please be patient with us or recognize that we’re humans. If we say hi, just like, say hi and then say your unit number. It’s little things, but sometimes people will come and be very aggressive or hostile. If you have a lost package, we feel genuinely bad, or at least I know I feel so bad for you, and we didn’t intentionally lose your package. Please don’t take your anger out on us. We are trying very hard! Most people are good about [that].”

Eve Butterworth ’25

“I did most of my work before everyone came back to school. [During] the first giant wave of packages, it was one the most hectic places that I’ve worked, because we had no space to put anything away. We’re continually accepting new packages, and UPS or Amazon just throw them here! That’s why you see piles and piles of packages, because we don’t have any space. We’ve been packed floor to ceiling the entire time. I’ve seen a lot of hate towards the mailroom, honestly, especially on YikYak and Twitter, and there’s literally nothing that the student employees or even the mailroom employees can do about it. We’ve spent months trying to get delivery trucks and drivers so that we can transport the packages to the dorms like we’ve been doing it. I know waiting for your package forever can really suck, but just go easy on us, we don’t like this any more than anyone else does. Oh, and for the first-years, no one finds it easy to open their mailboxes on the first try, or on the 50th try.”

Raines Seeley ’25

“The first couple of weeks have been crazy. We’re just getting such a large volume of packages coming in. Other than that, I love it. I love interacting with a bunch of people. I feel like it’s a really fun place to work because you do get to see a lot of people, you’re also in the middle of Lulu so you can see everybody walking by. We all kind of bonded over the chaos that has been the first couple of weeks.

“The playlist is one mailroom tradition definitely. I’m always very self conscious about my aux. My friends don’t really let me on aux that often because I can’t really assess the vibes very well. But yesterday, I was setting the playlist and everyone [in the mailroom] was like, oh my gosh, this is so good.

“Don’t forget to write your unit number on your packages because when you don’t write your unit number you have to go through the system, figure out who the person is … it’s just a whole process. And come to the mailroom only when you get emails. Sometimes I feel like people get kind of irate just because … you ordered a package. You want your package. But just remember that we’re all students working there and, like, we’re all doing our best. Just remember that we’re also Wellesley students just trying to get through our day.”

Colleen Boggs ’23 @colleenboggs

I don’t think it was really intentional. I started gaining an audience in the summer of 2020. I would make TikToks with my sister, funny dances, the ones that everyone makes, but in the summer of 2020 I redid my room at home, and I had a really cute room. I would make videos showing my room off, and that is what kick started my TikTok account.

There have been a couple videos that went viral. There were two videos that I made with my sister, random funny ones. Ever since I have done TikTok more intentionally, there was a video with a fall filter that I put on my room because I have a very decorated room. I also did the ‘I am woman’ picture challenge, which is my most crazy successful video that I have done. It got almost three million views. It was also overwhelming. Everyone was very nice in the comments.

People will tell me that I inspire them or that  they enjoy my posts. It’s so weird that people enjoy my content. It’s really cool just knowing that I can brighten someone’s day or make them think about something in a different way.

Grace Fang ’23 @gratorade @disgracist

Right now I’m looking to really expand on making more videos about food science and politics. I know before I made a lot of videos about leftist politics and feminism and general life advice, but … I don’t like dealing with so much vitriol and controversy and I don’t want to feel like I’m using and exploiting that controversy and exploiting people’s real issues and problems to get clout. So I really want to start talking about what I’m genuinely interested in and passionate about, even outside of ‘advocacy’ I just love talking about food science and food politics and so that’s what I’m planning on doing after I come back from hiatus.

I really stopped for a long time because I wasn’t getting any joy out of it … like this is becoming a chore, it feels like an obligation. Now I’ve sort of reset my mindset. I’m like, no, I want to talk about what I’m interested in. I don’t want to engage with negative people and hopefully once I start to get some time, I’ll really start to actually take time out of my day for content creation, and maybe pursue something more serious and professional.

Meiya Sparks Lin ’22 @meiyarose

Something that I really enjoy about TikTok is that I can post about things that I’m really passionate about that are kind of random, and people will be like, oh, that’s so cool! So I posted a little bit on my thesis, which is about Cyborgs and Techno-Orientalism. It’s just something that I enjoy talking about 24/7 and to be able to talk to like 300,000 people about it is kind of incredible.

Most of the time I’ll make videos because I’m like, oh, there’s this thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I want to hear what other people are saying about it, and what other people think. I want to share my thoughts on it.

I definitely have a lot of people on Tik Tok who I’m friends with and who I really admire or people who I used to follow on Pinterest or something like that in 2015, and now we’re friends which is wild … I think that that has been the most valuable thing about TikTok, that I get to hang out with all these cool people and by hang out I mean I just comment on their videos. I do do brand sponsorships. I am sponsored by NYX Cosmetics. I would prefer not to, but it’s kind of impossible to make money from the creator fund. I don’t really want to ask my followers for money because they’re probably in the same financial situation that I’m in.

Andy Arrangoiz ‘22 @quitecurly

I’d say I go back and forth between considering art a hobby and a vocation, and I guess time will tell me the answer at some point. While I’m at Wellesley I tend to be quite inactive on my art social media, which is something I wish I was better at keeping up with! Lockdown did wonders for my online presence.

I don’t think I have a niche, really, or at least I associate that word with a certain level of quirkiness and/or specificity that I simply don’t think I possess. I think I obviously have a certain audience, and that is one that is interested in art, because what I post is art.

I don’t love much of the art I share on my social media accounts (there’s stuff I don’t share that I like more), and I’m constantly grappling with the internal dissonance between what I want to create and what gets attention.

Over the past school year because of COVID… we didn’t really operate as a team. We had practices, but we couldn’t have contact so they were just throwing the ball around. This season, I think everybody was so excited to get into playing. We had a pretty big rookie class, which was really exciting. We actually had enough people to build a team. Our first actual game of the season was just … it had been a year and a half since anybody on the team had actually played a Rugby game. I think that was a really big moment for our team.

Carrie Goeke-Morey ’24

One of my favorite memories was our Halloween practice. It was the Friday before Halloween, and our coach was like guys, we’re just gonna do some fun games and everyone came in costume. We all went around the circle and said what we all were dressed as and people were pissing themselves laughing, and people were acting out their costumes and running around Sev green. I was wearing a blonde wig and just running around. My coach brought her dog too, and it was just a very special night.

Emerson Rogers ’22

“The team has been such an important community. It’s a place where I’ve felt the safety to come into myself. I think at Wellesley there’s this feeling that you can’t try unless you know you’re gonna be good. And I think that Rugby, because so few people have tried it before… . everybody is going to be different levels of successful and going to learn and it’s a safe place to learn. I think that extends beyond just drills and tackling and running. It’s been such a fantastic and inclusive space for me, and I wanted to continue to do that for other people.

Jenn Betancourt ’22

My favorite memory from this season was probably one of our last practices where it was raining and it was cold, and we were all exhausted. And there was like a moment during practice where we all kind of just laughed, and it was like this is insane. This is ridiculous. Like how are we [a] thing right now? But we kind of just laughed and push[ed] through. That’s kind of just our overall perspective on life.

Brynne Rurak ’23

I think I remember specifically when I had my advancement recital, so that is when you go up with Margaret, the carillon instructor, and she shows you how to play the main bells. And before that point, you don’t play on the bells that everyone hears; you just play on the practice one. And I just remember I messed up a whole bunch. Like I did so bad, and everyone could hear it all over campus. That’s funny. It’s just like part of being in the carillonneurs — everyone can hear your mistakes. So … you got to go with the flow.

Annabel Yao ’24

In my sophomore year I wanted to be more involved on campus. I have a lot of piano background but I’m not really prepared to join orchestra or those kinds of music orgs. A couple of days after I arrived [on] campus, I heard the bell ring, and I was like where is that coming from? I didn’t even know that the carillon was an instrument before. I wanted to be artistically or musically related to some kind of like student org, and it’s just a very cool opportunity for me to really be involved in campus events to some extent. We had concerts throughout the weekend for family and friends weekend, and we had concerts through the whole Tanner Conference period, so it was like it was really fun. I felt like the bell ringing is open to a much broader audience because literally everyone on campus can hear it, so it’s less exclusive. I feel like the bell means a lot to a lot of people, it can be there for you when you’re upset, or it can be there for you when you’re sharing joy and happiness with your friends. I feel like it’s in the background of the whole Wellesley experience, and being part of that makes me feel like I’m important as well.”

Sydney Nguyen ’24

We’ve been going on road trips. It’s really fun to play on different carillons and it’s a different experience … it feels different from our Wellesley carillon and also to meet professional carillonneurs. It’s really cool to talk about making arrangements and other aspects of the instrument. The Guild is a really fun crew!

Abby Pan ’22

During exam period, during loud hour, we’ll go up and play. It’s a really fun performance  because everyone’s hyped up from studying and everyone’s going a little crazy. And so a lot of times we’ll go out there and we’ll play stuff that nobody would usually play. I used to have a tradition with our old guild president who graduated last year that every reading period, we’d go up and play “Bohemian Rhapsody” together. And we’d never practice it or anything, just like, go in, try it out. See what happens. It always falls apart. It was a lot of fun.

Childcare as Commodity: The Impact of Capitalism on Children, Parents and Communities

My Tanner was called Childcare as Commodity and the Impacts of Capitalism on Children, Parents and communities. It was based on my time as a live-in full time nanny for four years. I learned that it’s really hard to take care of kids and being a parent and choosing to have kids … it’s mentally and physically and financially taxing to have children, and it’s not a light decision … and [yet] we’re still constantly pushed to have this nuclear family, and to have children. I was advocating to rethink that decision, and to move away from the form of the nuclear family. I was advocating for community support and mutual aid when it comes to raising children. There are various levels [to how] you can help with kids, you can say ‘Hey I’ll make you a meal for tonight’ or … send me your grocery list, I’ll get your groceries while I’m out, too.’ I just wanted people to rethink their perceptions of children and how we address childcare.

I got more confidence in myself, and just reaffirmed my experiences. I also had to deal with my internal patriarchy and misogyny because I was decounting what is traditionally women’s work. I think that was probably what I got the most out of it was having these like internal reflections.

Jordan Bates ’22

Centering Compassion: Putting Love Pedagogy to Practice at Aga Khan Primary School

My internship was supposed to be in Uganda, but it was virtual. I worked at a school, Aga Khan, over the summer. As an education studies major and someone who is also doing the early elementary school certification program here, it was an internship that resonated a lot with me as someone who’s also trying to get certified and wants to become a teacher. The education classes, and even the Africana Studies classes that I have taken here at Wellesley talked a lot about pedagogy and the different teaching practices. I was able to kind of see firsthand how pedagogy connects to real life classroom experiences.

One thing that I thought was really cool about presenting was introducing everyone to Lisa Arrastia’s Love Pedagogy and talking about how you teach the classroom with a center on compassion and community and humanizing yourself, but also humanizing and putting at the center children’s experiences and their lived experiences. I really loved the experience, and I’m still talking with some of the teachers there now. It was really great to kind of get to share what I have been constantly reflecting on in my education classes, and thinking about the type of teacher that I want to be as well.

Lillie Godinez ’24

Auditing YouTube’s Information Panels: What Do They Cover and How?

This past summer I was basically auditing YouTube, trying to figure out what their policy is for discouraging conspiratorial content on their platform, and how widespread that policy is, and how it’s being used basically.”

I think the best part was feeling like a researcher. You know what I mean! It felt really good to tell people about my research, and it was also really nice to present it in front of people. I thought I would be nervous but I wasn’t, because I was just talking about what I know and what’s interesting to me.

If you’re looking for opportunities, my biggest advice is to go to office hours. It was nice to have that connection with my professor. I went to office hours to ask her what is something that I can do over the summer to improve my CS abilities and teach myself Python, and that’s how I got introduced to this opportunity.

Anna Kraffmiller ’24 (@philosophicanna)

I would say [Wellesley Twitter is] very unofficial … it’s a way to connect with people outside of the context of your res hall or a class or a club. On the whole, the people who sort of frequent Wellesley Twitter … I would say probably skew a little more critical of the College than other students might be. It’s a good place to complain, and it’s a good place to ask the stupid questions that you don’t know where to ask, like, ‘where’s the printer?,’ or, ‘how do I print things?’ Just like logistical things about the College that you don’t get when you’re a remote student which was my experience [during] spring semester.

I was hanging out in someone’s dorm room and there were a few people there, and we all took off our Birkenstocks at the door, and everyone was wearing Birkenstocks … all of them have the same shape, and we put them in a line. I took a picture of it and I put it on Twitter and I was like, ‘this is what going to a historically women’s college is really like.’ I expected some people from Wellesley to like the tweet, but somehow alums started finding it, and then it was getting 500 or 600 likes or something, and I got a response from an alum who was the commencement speaker last year.

Jasper Saco ’22 (@_jassaco)

The first word that comes to mind is unhinged, and I think that’s partially why I really enjoy [Wellesley Twitter]. I’ve met a lot of people through Wellesley Twitter. The community I found there has been really … like controlled chaos. It’s like a friendly atmosphere where you don’t have to feel weird about asking things because people will respond to you. People will step up for you. I think that’s something that comes through both in real life and on Wellesley Twitter.

The convocation speech [was my favorite moment] … it was a very good example of how Wellesley Twitter communicates and how they all tend to have similar opinions and it’s nice to find a community that I share the same values with and the same morals. So yeah, my favorite was the convocation speech because we really saw people get together and talk in a way that you can’t really do anymore … you can’t really really gather like that.

Katherine Tracy ’23

You don’t really join Wellesley Twitter, but I started to follow people who went to Wellesley and I found that it was sort of an interesting, offbeat way to learn about campus life or what people thought about certain events. One thing I especially enjoy is when people live tweet like an email, or like the public health lectures that we had last year. I was always just kind of looking to learn more about campus life, especially during COVID and learn students’ perspectives that weren’t my own or weren’t part of the little bubble that I could only interact with last year.

I think Little Cat [is my favorite], which is more like a series of things … I feel like it kind of started because Abby Martinage tweeted, ‘Can we just get a round of applause for this cat?’ I think that’s where the phenomenon began, and it just really skyrocketed. Every time Eva Knaggs [’23] posts a photo of this cat, it gets like 100 likes and everyone’s like, I love this cat. It’s nice that we have this really small thing to agree about.

Twitter [is my favorite] by far. I think Instagram is something that is really super artificial and curated, even when people do those photo dumps. TikTok melts my brain and I am trying to spend less time on TikTok. I like Twitter because I think I express myself best when I’m writing something down. I like that I can get fun takes on world events but also get things from my little bubble at Wellesley.

Jess Stoker ’23 (@tmhjess)

I got back on [Twitter] during quarantine because everyone was talking about Wellesley Twitter and I was like fine! I think the Wellesley Twitter community … so little thought goes into it, and so much comes out of it.

I think in general it’s funny when someone makes a tweet that’s so out of pocket, and people are just all their replies like, should have stayed in the drafts, stop tweeting, you don’t have to tweet this. Those people then either delete it, and apologize and then just never talk about it again. Or they double back on it. It’s nice to keep that in mind, when I see them on campus because I’m like, you really were willing to die on that hill. Also, I think Wellesley Twitter during webinar bash, during any Wellesley event is really, really funny. The Met Gala was also really funny.

I know if I deleted Twitter, and I never went on it again, I would probably be so much happier with my life. But it’s so weird. It’s so addicting. I can’t leave … just now I got a notification from Twitter and I’m like, hey, I’m just gonna scroll through Twitter for a while.