Brina at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island: "The Best Four Years of Your Life"
TEENAGE DIARIES
Produced by: Joe Richman All Things Considered (NPR)
2/3/97

Robert Siegel, host: From NPR news this is ATC. Iím Robert Siegel

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: And I'm Linda Wertheimer.
As part of our continuing series "Teenage Diaries", producer Joe Richman has been giving tape recorders to young people around the country to document their lives. Today, we meet Brina Goldfarb. In September, Brina left her hometown, Monroe, New York, to attend Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She kept an audio diary of her first semester. This is Brina's story.


BRINA, DIARIST: My name is Brina Goldfarb. And I just turned 18. I come from a small town, a small, boring town. I don't really feel like I fit in in Monroe. I think I've always been a bit of an oddball. But I've always grown up with a sense that there was a greater world out there. And I think that college represented to me, I think a bit of escape.

[sound of people talking]

BRINA: Brown's a small university. There are about 5,000 undergrads. I live in Keeney Quad in Everett dorm. It's the -- the biggest freshman dorm on campus.

[students introducing themselves]

BRINA: The first day, I was so nervous. I walked into Keeney Quad. And there I picked up my room key. And then a whole bunch of people ended up congregating in the hallway. We all sat down. And I had a great time. We sat there for hours just in the middle of the hallway. And just more and more people ended up coming by.

MALE STUDENT #1: Do you guys know the song "Elderly Woman Behind the..."
GROUP: Yeah! Yeah!
MALE STUDENT #2: Oh, I love that song! I love "Behind the Counter in a Small Town".

[guitar begins playing, group sings along, "... recognize your face..."]

BRINA: I have this weird sense that anybody I meet I might never see again, and also that somebody I meet could end up being my best friend for life. And I just don't know it yet.

GROUP, SINGING: Fade away. Thoughts and thoughts they fade. Fade away.

[singing fades out]

BRINA: So I've been at college for three days now. And my daily routine is to get up at eight, stumble into the shower, stumbling into the shower at the same time as everybody else who has 9:00 classes is doing.

[knock on door]

BRINA: Come in!
FEMALE STUDENT: Brina, you in there?
BRINA: Yes, I am. I'm coming right now. Oh, I have to go fast.

[door closes]

BRINA: Hey, Merrissa, how are you?

[walking down stairs]

FEMALE STUDENT: It's really raining.
BRINA: Oh, it is? Uh-oh. It rains all the time in Providence.

[rain sound]

FEMALE STUDENT: It came undone? I hate this! I want a new umbrella.

[bell chimes, then rain and bell sounds fade]

PROFESSOR: Hi. You're looking at the (inaudible)...
STUDENTS: [laughter]
PROFESSOR: Now, all of a sudden it changed just till next Thursday, I mean, this Thursday. Your -- your first draft...

BRINA: My professor of my Introduction to Political Thought class is gorgeous. And I know that's like so incredibly anti- intellectual of me to think of it. But he's such an incredibly romantic figure. It's just like this brow. And he's very funny. And he is brilliant. I was entranced through the entire lecture.

[sounds of discussion after class]

FEMALE STUDENT: You have that right.
MALE STUDENT: It is. It's a matter of it being just. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
FEMALE STUDENT: It's a matter being decided.
MALE STUDENT: Who decides what's just? I -- I...

BRINA: A lot of people on my hall are in my political thought lecture.

BRINA: (in discussion) Because I think that there has to be some definition of right.
MALE STUDENT: I don't think so. I think the majority decides what the morals are. And that's why...

BRINA: They blossom into these huge things in the hallway where we have these big debates on these pressing questions of morality and politics and the meaning of life.

[discussion fades]

BRINA: It's exactly 12:00 midnight. It's Friday night and I'm in my room. And I just feel like, oh, I just feel terrible, because I don't know. But, like, I want to be doing something Friday night. And it's like I wanted things to change when I went to college, like I would have more fun here. And I'm not. And it's just like, is it my fault, like I -- I just can't meet people the way other people do, or -- I -- I really -- I really don't understand.

[song begins, Indigo Girls]

BRINA: This room has really become my home. Photographs, I've taped some photographs on my walls, and my Matisse print, my Shakespeare calendar, my curtains. And I look over and see Emily's side and I see, oh, she's got this picture of this woman with -- it looks like letter openers shoved through her face. laugh. I think that I came into this whole roommate relationship with such high -- high aspirations for what my roommate could be like.

[knock on door]

BRINA: Come in. Hold on a second. Yeah, she's not in. All right, want to leave a message on the door?

[song stops]

BRINA: All right. So somebody was at the door, somebody for Emily. Some guy she just wanted to hook up with or did hook up with, didn't hook up with, or thought about, I don't know. She's met so many people, so many guys, who just like fall all over her. But there's a term at Brown which is you being "sexiled" (ph) if your roommate is -- excludes you from you know -- exiles you from your room for various reasons. And Emily's never done that. She's never, you know, been doing anything really bad. But she just brings in the entire male population of Brown into our room. And then she just lies down with them and then she put her head on his chest. And I mean, the quarterback of the football team was in here today when I came back from the library. And it bugs me. And I'm just going to have to have a talk with her because she's never doing anything really bad. But it just makes me feel very very unwelcome in my room. OK, it felt really good to get that out.


[telephone dialing]

BRINA: Hi, Dad.
BRINA'S FATHER: Hi, honey.
BRINA: How are you? Good, good.
BRINA'S FATHER: What's the big news?
BRINA: The big news? Nothing much. I have to read a book by Tuesday. It's a -- a medieval epic. I'm forgetting the name of the guy who wrote it. Oh, yeah. Everything's been wonderful. And then you had a squirrel in the house? That's horrible. laugh
All right.
BRINA'S MOTHER: Are you getting enough sleep?
BRINA: Yes. Yes.
BRINA'S MOTHER: You're eating OK?
BRINA: Yes.
BRINA'S MOTHER: OK. Bye.
BRINA: Bye.

[telephone hangs up]

BRINA: It's Wednesday night. No, no, it's not Wednesday night, geez. It's Monday night. And one very upsetting thing which happened, over break, a student Darren committed suicide. I've seen him around campus. He works at Joe's, which is the snack bar, so he works at the -- he worked at the -- the cash register. And he wore this cape all the time. And he didn't come home for the break. And his father calls. And the police went into his room. And they found him there. He had hung himself. There are these bars on our -- for the heating vents. And he -- he rigged something on them. I don't know, he -- I -- it's really too bad.

[room sound fades out]

[people talking]

MALE STUDENT: I just saw the Brown Derbies out in the street. They're doing something tonight, I think.
FEMALE STUDENTS: [gasp, scream] ohhhhh. Where?
MALE STUDENT: They're all dressed up. They are just heading out...

[students running down stairs, screaming, laughing]

[sound of Brown Derbies singing "I Want You Back"]

BRINA: I haven't met anybody yet whom I really want to have a serious relationship with.


[Brown Derbies singing:"Oh, baby give me one more chance. Baby, I love you. Won't you please let me back in your heart?"

BRINA: I can picture myself going out on -- I don't know -- on a date to some -- or maybe just going for coffee with some ravishingly handsome character who -- I don't know -- challenges me to think in ways that I've never thought before while he smokes his cigarettes. Maybe he'd be a little bit egotistic. And that would be something that I wouldn't like about him. But he would be special. He would be different. But in a way, you know, deep down, I kind of wonder if it will happen. You know, there are 1400 people in my grade. There are 5000 undergraduates at the university. There has to be somebody.

[Brown Derbies, continued (singing ends): "I want you back", crowd claps and cheers, sound fades out]

[sound of key in door, door opens]

BRINA: Hey, Emily.
EMILY, BRINA'S ROOMMATE: Hi.
BRINA: How was work?

BRINA: One thing that's good is that I think I'm starting to understand Emily better.

BRINA: (to Emily) I have to be like perfectly honest. In the beginning I was like a little worried.
EMILY: What were you worried about?
BRINA: 'Cause like, you were like with all these guys. And I was like, oh, no, she's like so socially superior to me, and...
EMILY: Superior?
BRINA: ... she's going to have like all these people. And I'm never going to be able to get into my room. But, like, I'm very happy to say that I was totally proved wrong in that. laugh

[people laughing]

FEMALE STUDENT: Oh, this is the best part, right when it starts.

[group singing, Pearl Jam]

BRINA: So it's my last night here first semester. But it's so weird because now it's like every place I look at on campus, there are memories attached to it now, when before it was all just a blur. I was talking about this with Alan, my next-door neighbor. I was telling him how I have this vague memory of this tall guy helping me hang up my curtains the
first day. But now I realize that he's Alan.

[music fades]

MALE STUDENT: Toast? Toast?
GROUP: To unit six! Unit six!
MALE STUDENT: The least getting it unit in the nation...

[group laughs, cheers]

BRINA: I think it was a good semester. I feel like my head is just bigger, like I've gained all this new knowledge, and that, just felt like I -- I've grown up a lot.

BRINA: (to friends) I have to get everybody's phone numbers and stuff.
MALE STUDENT: Don't forget about me when I'm...
FEMALE STUDENT: Have a good vacation!
FEMALE STUDENT #2: Bye, Jess.

[talking, sounds fade out]

BRINA: While I was home, I had this weird sensation that college had never happened. And then I was very nervous about coming back to school. And then when I came back, and I had, you know, my bags, and I walked down the hallway, and Jessica came out of her room...and she said, "Hey, Brina!" And then Kirina was there. And I think Mugsie was home. And Court was home. And Loren was home. And it just was this thing, like all of a sudden I realized that as I was, you know, laughing at some joke that I feel comfortable here. I can be me. I don't have to worry, like, I really live here.

[playing guitar and singing, American Pie]

PEOPLE SINGING: "Teenage broncing buck With a pink carnation and a pickup truck And I was out of luck the day the music died I started singing bye-bye Miss American Pie Drove my Chevy to the levee But the levee was dry And good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye Singing this'll be the day that
I die This'll be the day that I die...

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: Our story was written and recorded by 18-year-old Brina Goldfarb, and produced by Joe Richman for our series "Teenage Diaries".

[song continues, then fades out]




© 1997, Joe Richman