The following is a series of interviews that College senior Malik Wood conducted with senior Honors students about their Honors project experiences.

It’s an odd Tuesday. The weather is what makes it odd. It’s the kind of sticky warmth that sends torrents of sweat coursing from the brow. It’s the manner of heat that nullifies even the most pensive of personalities and the most complex of minds. It is a good day to interview the latest inductees into Oberlin’s intelligentsia.

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Cate Hall

The sky is a tapestry of the last streaks of sunlight. It is a Monet up close, beautiful strokes out of a master’s palette smeared across the heavens. Seated to my right, Cate Hall maintains a façade of “I’ve seen it all before.”

Only a matter of weeks after she completed her Honors project in sociology, we’re sitting on the porch of Wilder at sunset. She is thoughtfully sipping an Aquafina Citrus with Splenda and taking bites out of a small salad. Despite the oppressiveness of the weather she affects an air of calm as she stares serenely across the expanse of Wilder Bowl.

Malik Wood: In retrospect, do you think that Honors was worthwhile?  
Cate Hall: I think it was a rewarding experience academically and intellectually, but it was also extremely emotionally and mentally taxing.

MW: Any regrets? Time? Friendships? Responsibilities?
CH: I wish I had more time to spend with my friends, because it’s my last year, but being isolated from my social circle does not outweigh the benefits of going through this.

MW: Do you believe that an Honors education filled a vacuum in your Oberlin education?
CH: It provided a really interesting and challenging way to finish off my experience here. I don’t think it’s something that’s missing from everyone’s education or that everyone should do Honors. But, yes, I would have felt strange if I hadn’t done Honors.

MW: Why Honors?
CH: I had a topic and a research question I was really dedicated to and I felt I couldn’t have explored that to a full extent within the context of a seminar.

MW: What’s your project?
CH: A Foucaultian analysis of the California three strikes law.

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Tyler Finn

A few hours later I find myself sitting in the living room of Tyler Finn’s West College Street house. He is an Honors political theorist. The room is littered with an mélange of furniture, empty beer cans and forgotten or left-behind articles of clothing. Finn fidgets a little here and there as he puffs on the first cigarette of a new pack and the smoke hangs in the air at eye level. A League of Their Own switches on unexpectedly after a protracted commercial break. It’s one of the Madonna and Geena Davis scenes that just doesn’t develop the way you think it will.

MW: How was the past year?
Tyler Finn: It was a long process starting in September, ending a few weeks ago. It was intense. Nonetheless, it was a nice thing to have continuity. Just a lot of time went into it. Lots of coffee.  

MW: Was it worth it?
TF: Let’s just say at the end I felt a sense of accomplishment. It was definitely a feeling of accomplishment coupled with relief. It’s very rewarding to be conversant in the subject I’ve studied for the last four years.

MW: Having done Honors, do you think it improved your Oberlin experience?
TF: Definitely. As I said before, I got a chance to use all the theorist approaches that I’ve encountered, especially in writing my thesis and then the oral exam. It’s nice to use everything I learned especially senior year. It was a welcome change to concentrate on something of my design, something based in my own interests. It made me feel like an academic.

MW: What’s your project?
TF: I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I have explained it to so many people. That’s all they ask you: “What’s your thesis about?” Nonetheless, rest assured I am an expert on it.

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Spencer Backman

I’m at the ’Sco listening to the Top 100 never heard hip-hop hits of the ’90s and beyond. The bass lines burst the overly capable speakers. Well before the throngs of procrastinators and academic ass-shakers make their way into the room, it’s hot. Really hot. So hot you think that the whole heat of the day is held in every brick.

Bathed in the red light of the rigging system overhead, Honors mathematician Spencer Backman takes a pull of his beer as he simultaneously overviews the crowd and carries on a conversation. Looking more like a farmer on his night off than someone who will soon be traveling across the world to study math, he seems bemused by the prospect of a public discourse of such an enigmatic topic.

MW: Why did you do it in the first place?
Spencer Backman: I liked Math. I wanted to go to grad school. It seemed liked the right thing to do. I guess also in some respects it’s an intellectual status symbol.

MW: Any regrets?
SB: I would’ve started my work this summer. Oh, and I would’ve bragged more.

MW: What do you see as the long-term effects?
SB: Honors was the experience of my senior year and the long-term effects will be how it molded me this year.

MW: What’s your project?
SB: Math stuff, Algebraic Combinatorics, Representation Theory of the Symmetric, Coxeter and Reflection Groups. And a tad of Markov Chain Theory.

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Nayeem Mahbub

My final interview occurred rather peacefully in the bay outside of the ’Sco. The night had finally chilled, and high above, a faded yellow light cast odd shadows. Sitting against a stone column in a pair of khaki shorts and a thin sweater, Nayeem Mahbub is wide-eyed taking in everyone as they pass, keen on the mannerisms and silently observing the litany of conversation.

It makes sense. Mahbub, who will receive a degree with Honors in cinema studies, has been making a movie during the last year — a film he wrote, directed and edited, in which he made humorous observations about life and love in college.

MW: How do you feel now that you’re done?
Nayeem Mahbub: Every day for a year I woke up with my [film] on my mind in some shape or form. I didn’t get a break. It’s a pressure I put on myself. I drove myself nuts.

MW: Are you better off having done the project?
NM: I think so. I don’t know how I feel about the final result, but the process was invaluable.

MW: Are you any smarter?
NM: I think I have more varied skill sets, more creative ways to deal with problems. This whole thing was just one problem after another over the course of a year. You get into a groove I guess.

MW: What’s your project?
NM: I just wanted to make a short, tight film. Just play, work with dialogue, actors. Then go crazy with style and ideas. I chose to make a college romantic comedy but wanted to sneak in subversive elements like an awareness of race and parental pressure.

 

After interviewing these students I found particular similarity. They all speak differently, study differently and think differently. No one was willing to put down his or her program. In fact each of them, despite complaining about the time and effort that was required, felt very strongly that it was all worth it.

Maybe that’s the tie that binds, a common sense of pride in setting out and then accomplishing difficult goals. It is either that or a love of cheap beer ­— they all showed up to down a quarter cup by the time I had left and were more than happy to point out the myriad of other Honors students they saw throughout the crowd.