BSC Where Are They Now: College Edition

Kristy. Kristy's always been the insane, BSC Uber Alles member. When her plans of getting the entire club to go to the same school conveniently located within a mile of Stoneybrook, 90210/Boy Meets World/Saved By the Bell-style fall through, she'll go a little insane. The other members will respond with, "Kristy, we haven't been close in years and we're basing our college choices on [scholarship options/majors/where our boyfriends are going], not who we hung out with in middle school," and she'll decide college isn't for her.

Kristy will be the lone take-a-year-off-to-find-herself BSC-er. (And by find herself, I mean find the courage to resolve the sexual tension that's been happening between her and Abby ever since Kristy yelled at her for having an asthma attack.)

Mary Anne. Mary Anne will be an R.A. at a women's college up in Massachusetts. Not the kind of R.A. who does it for the stipend and free board, but because she loves an excuse to passive aggressively boss people around. When she's not studying to become a social worker, she's spending (chaste) time with her boyfriend, Doug, who goes to one of the co-ed schools across the way and is a fellow R.A.

Memorable moment. Smelling marijuana smoke and stepping out into the hall in her macramed R.A. bathrobe. Not to go and bust heads, mind you, but to make it clear she's here to offer a fun and way healthier alternative, like making potholers for nursing home inmates or watching Dirty Dancing and drinking a shot of apple juice any time there's a Mount Holyoke reference. Anyone wanna see her pleater?

School of choice: Mount Holyoke, Smith, or Wellesley (Mary Anne will base her decision not on which of them gives her a better financial package but on whichever one will let her bring her cat.)

Claudia. Claud will be the performance artist. When the jaded art school confidential bunch scoff at her candy art as pedestrian, Warhol-esque, and lackluster, she'll try as hard as she can to get some cred, stooping even to incorporate body fluids into her art.

Can't you just see Claudia trying to do her own Georgia O'Keefe inspired flower/vagina paintings, using menstrual blood? Or artificially impregnating herself and then aborting like that Yale art student hoax a few years back?


(Above, Claud's senior thesis, a tampon in a teacup.)

Memorable Moment. When Claudia comes home to do her laundry and her parents have discussions about her future late at night.

Mr. Kishi: "OK, I know the top three Asian futures--medicine, law, and engineering--are out for her. But she's at least as smart as a moderately intelligent monkey. What about business school?"

Mrs. Kishi: "Hmmm. Mr. Zorzi could write her a recommendation about how she didn't cheat on that math test in 8th grade. Her honesty in the face of sheer mediocrity would have gotten her hired at Enron ten years ago for sure."

School of choice: NYU or Sarah Lawrence. Yes, I know both of these schools generally require the applicant to be able to correctly spell their names, but Claud can include a snapshot of herself a la Elle Woods if it comes to that. Of course, you know this is only a one or two year experiment till she drops out to go to F.I.T.

Stacey. Stacey will initially try to go the sorority route. When they blackball her for hitting on their boyfriends (which she'll interpret as "They were all jealous of me--besides, I'm too sophisticated for a sorority anyway"), she'll go a different route. Sex columnist! "Writing is easy!" she'll tell herself as she peruses Bluefly.com in between describing the sexual styles of engineering versus English majors.

(Stacey, only think less Asian, with higher stilettos and a shorter skirt)

Stacey will get huffy when the NYTimes interviews her and charitably declines to eviscerate her writing style, instead opting to favorably review her stilettos and postage stamp skirts. "I'm more than my meticulously accessorized outfits!"

Memorable Moment. "How dare you people write letters to me saying you think I'm sexy? When I wrote the column Blow Jobs for Bimbos, that was NOT an invitation to talk to me about sex. And I did not plagiarize the line I never lost my head even when I was giving head from Lou Reed. He must have copied it from me."

School of choice. Stacey, with her decent grades (and her ability to coax recommendations from young male teachers who stand a little too close to her) will be the only BSC-er to tickle the Ivies, as it were. I see her at Columbia so she won't have to cut back on her weekly shopping trips. Of course, there'll be a lot of whining over why they couldn't have built the school opposite Bloomie's on the East side.

Dawn. Dawn will be a women's study major with a minor in environmental science. Her formerly preppy California casual style, once peppered with the occasional Laura Ashley dress, will devolve into hippie skirts made from hemp and scarves made of whatever she finds on the side of the road when supervising the anti littering initiative at the beach.

(Think blonder, angrier, with breasts that are saggier--er, ah, more liberated.)

Memorable moment. The time Dawn tried to comfort an assault victim on the rape crisis hotline but ended up dissolving into tears over guilt at her white privilege and inability to go beyond level three veganism only to be comforted by assault victim.

School of choice: Sarah Lawrence if she returns to the East coat (Dawn's going to make Ten Things' Kat look subdued) or UC Berkley if she decides to stay a California gal.

Jessi. She'll become an African American studies major with a minor in dance. No, I didn't get that backwards. With her dreams of devoting her life to dance out the window (gal's got Aunt Ce's hips in her genetic makeup), she'll devote all her energy towards AA studies. When she's not stalking Toni Morrison, she'll be spending most of her time the campus bookstore demanding that they carry more copies of For Colored Girls (and surreptitiously graffiti-ing "UNPACK YOUR PRIVILEGE" in copies of classics written by Whitey).

Memorable moment: Jessi being turned down to dance the lead in a modern day student run version of Aida. Jessi's reaction: "It's because I'm black, isn't it? No way Whitey casts a black girl to play a Nubian slave!"

School of choice: Initially, I thought of historically black colleges. But if Jessi goes to one of those, she'll have to get a personality. Being "the black girl" won't carry her far at Spelman or Howard. Considering the hissy fit she threw when Mallory took riding lessons and went to boarding school without her, she'll probably end up wherever everyone's favorite ginger goes.

Mallory. Mallory will initially get mocked for thinking that great journalism means writing exposes on the cafeteria food. But eventually, after a few fiction workshops and poetry seminars (where you know she'll pass off more than a few of Vanessa's couplets as her own), she'll learn to write meaningful prose.

Memorable moment: Being asked by Tom Wolfe to ghostwrite I Am Charlotte Simmons (what, you thought he actually risked getting his dainty white suit stained with Schnappes by going to frat parties himself? All lies for the press kit!). And because Mal makes Napoleon Dynamite look suave, laidback parties where people play Coke pong and have debates about the relative hotness of Johnny Depp are, in her eyes, drunken orgies straight out of Brave New World (except replace soma with roofies).

School of choice. Vassar! As in, "At this rate I won't even get into Vassar." No hate from those of you who did go here--Vassar was actually my close second choice.

Janine. Will going to university give Janine the social skills she needs to succeed in life? Are you kidding? Janine's going to be the girl who sits back to back with her roommate while they IM each other. She'll have 5,000 Facebook friends and Twitter followers, none of whom she's ever met. But she will be their queen, regaling them with hilarious math/science commentary as she takes her first tentative steps into assuming her next identity (as Randall Munroe). The Internet will do for college kids like Janine what frats did for guys like Bluto.

Memorable Moment. Publishing this comic to her personal blog. From there, fame, fortune, and the respect of geeks, dweebs, and spazzes everywhere will follow. (As well as the growing resentment of starving artist Claudia "Tampon in a Teacup" Kishi.)

School of choice: M.I.T., bitches. You know that the Kishis would probably commit seppuku if at least one of their daughters didn't go to the mecca of acceptable Asian schools.