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Only a couple of weeks
after she took up residence at Smith, Aria Cabot ’06,
an English major from Long Beach, California, lifted some
lines from her diary and published them for all her hometown
to see.
“I’ve only been here
at Smith College a few weeks, and already I feel immersed
in a completely different world,” she wrote in the daily
Long Beach Press-Telegram. “My introduction to college
has come and gone in a whirlwind of new activities, people,
and experiences. I think I’m still high on the adrenaline.”
Cabot’s public ruminations
are part of “College Diary,” a periodic column
she has agreed to pen for the paper. Her September entry,
headlined “No time to be homesick,” was her first
in the series.
“College Diary” isn’t
Cabot’s first experience as a columnist. As a senior
at Poly High School, she belonged to a teen advisory group
that met once a month with the Press-Telegram’s entertainment
editor, Heather Wood, “to discuss various ‘teen
issues,’” Cabot explains.
She also contributed a piece
then for “Prom Diaries,” a weekly column in the
Press-Telegram written by high-school students.
As Cabot prepared to depart Long
Beach for Northampton late last summer, Wood asked her to
write a regular column based on her college experience. “Of
course I accepted,” says Cabot. She plans to submit
pieces throughout the academic year -- perhaps once a month,
she adds -- and may continue the column next year.
Cabot, who has written two columns so far, says her ideas
are easy to come by. “I really do draw them from my
personal diary,” she insists. “I try to be honest
and avoid superficiality.”
Consider this excerpt: “I’ve
eaten countless unidentifiable vegan dishes in the dining
hall, and I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on books I’m
not sure I’d read in my free time. I know I still have
so much to learn…so much to do and so little time.”
Read
Cabot's second column, published on October 25...
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