Beaver Reflections:
I graduated from Beaver in 1983, and I felt very comfortable in the school. Looking back, many people say that high school is the worst time of their educational lives and college is great. In my opinion, Beaver was amazing and made my high school experience more enjoyable than college. I loved the flexibility that Beaver offered. For example, I had taken biology the previous year at my former school and wanted to take Introduction to Psychology, and Beaver accommodated my request. Later, Developmental Psychology had students work in the nursery on campus, which allowed us to have first-hand experience with what we were studying. That class and the anthropology classes gave me direction in college and beyond. Another fun class was drama with Mr. Valentine, taught in the little red schoolhouse; English with Miss Thompson and with Ms. Eidlitz helped my writing skills. And I definitely appreciated that when I’d finished my math requirement, Mrs. Newberry encouraged me not to take calculus the following year. Perhaps the most important interaction I had was with Ms. Castello, the college counselor. She was honest about which colleges I was not going to get into even if I really wanted to, but she said, “You could be making As.” I hadn’t realized that before. That permission really helped and I ended up graduating cum laude.

What is #happening now in your life:
Following Beaver, I went to Skidmore College where I double-majored in psychology and anthropology. I considered going straight on to grad school. I wanted to do one-on-one therapy but I needed experience so I worked at McLean Hospital, a well-known psych hospital. I was there for almost two years and at some point, before I left I sort of impulsively applied to the Simmons College School of Social Work. I went there and in the midst of it, I met my ex-husband. He was in Oregon getting a Ph.D. To some people’s surprise, I actually finished my second year of social work school where I was, and then came out to Oregon. I’ll have been here 30 years this summer, which astounds me. I got a job in the county Alcohol and Drug Department and then went to a private clinic. I wasn’t there that long. I had gotten sick in 1994 with ulcerative colitis and I couldn’t work. Every time I tried to get off medication I flared up, so I was exhausted. I had surgery for it in 1997. I was in the hospital for nearly a month which was almost unheard of before Covid. Then I started getting into more creative stuff. I started taking short story writing classes, starting working at a writing desk at Oregon State. I took a class on rhetoric, which I always thought was, you know, BS, but is actually fuller than that, and ended up getting a master’s in it. I did some teaching at the community college where I also worked as a writing desk assistant. I had gotten an idea from someone else about editing people’s theses and dissertations and did some work for various professors for journal articles and things like that. Then my sources started drying up. All I was getting was people wanting resumes which was interesting at first and then got really boring, and I wasn’t making any money. I was losing it. I closed it officially about a year and a half ago. I’ll still do stuff for people I know. I’ve started doing something—in 2011 or something—with National Novel Writing Month in November. It’s great. They call it NaNoWriMo. You write 50,000 words in 30 days. You don’t cross anything out or delete it. You just write and what you get is a [lousy] first draft, but you’ve got, essentially, a novella. I’ve done it several years in a row and want to revise two of them, at least.

“One thing I appreciated about Beaver was how flexible and adaptable they were to students’ needs. They always prioritized the students, which made the school so enjoyable.”
– Melissa Weintraub ‘83

Advice to Beaver students:
Take advantage of where you are and who you are working with. Try not to be afraid of asking for help and finding ways to take initiative. Enjoy your time at Beaver because it will help shape you as a person later in life.