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violetclmThe big news should be that we're on Spring Break and the Qual is, given the o'clock, now less than a week away. Instead, the big news is a friend discovered dead in her dorm room on Saturday. As I had told people just a few hours beforehand, the only now-dead creatures I've ever really known have been pets and a senile great-grandmother. And, come to think of it, a former improv troupe guy, but he was an adult. So this is something new. My initial reaction was pretty numb, but for most of the first day I had a lot of trouble thinking of anything but her and the memories I still had... I'm mostly calmed down now, to the point where I want to write something about her (which the health and counseling center seems to think is a good idea), but it continues (and presumably will continue over the days to come) to hit me from time to time that she truly is gone.
In November 2008 I described her as follows:
Jess was open, honest, and caring. She was fun to be around and able to talk about the deepest subjects, abstract (given that she left in response to deficiencies in the Philosophy department) or personal (to herself or others), or to switch between the two modes. She liked dogs, cute things, and the people around her. She was involved in the fine arts and got excited when she met excited people. She had emotions and that was not something she had to apologize for. She was Jewish, and questioned it, and invested consideration into exactly what that meant for her (which definitely changed over time) instead of accepting anything blindly. Jess was a critical thinker.
Jess was responsible and dedicated. She was committed to Project Eye To Eye, an organization about matching younger people with various psychological irregularities (disorders, learning disabilities, and so on) with similarly irregular mentors. Last I heard, she had gotten her own weekly office hours in a supervisory position -- office hours I was impressed by and always intended to visit but now never will. I don't know what was going on in Jess's head, but, again, she seemed to be able to overcome it gracefully. I don't know when she started working with Eye To Eye, either, but she was in there for a while, was able to work with a variety of people (on both sides of the mentoring equation), and elicited respect and friendship from her coworkers. The closest I ever personally came to working with was, I believe, for Reed-Lane Day one year (or maybe some other similar event -- the details are hazy) when we were among the people coordinating bringing a group of youngsters to the school to check it out and encourage them to do well in their studies and stuff. I forgot how her last name was pronounced over the phone and she gave me grief thereafter. Jess had a cutting, but never malicious, quick sense of humor, and made jokes that would stay with people for months or longer after the fact, but was not self-absorbed about it and always appreciated the friends around her and valued their humor and insights both.
I never knew much about Jess besides the things she was doing then, when I would see her. There were rumors about her conflicts with other people I won't go into, and she came out positively in them. I don't know much about her future plans, other than that she had them. Just a few days before she died she was looking for summer housing, and we were offering her a place here. I wish that could have happened. I don't know many details about her past, either, in part just because I'm apparently really bad at remembering that stuff. When I mentioned her (cultural) heritage in an email freshman year, she responded: "I do, unfortunately, the heritage I have a firm grasp of is my mother's Italian history." That was Jess... her language wasn't flowery, she didn't suck up to people, she didn't pretend things that weren't true, but she was brilliant and giving and responsible. We don't know how or why she died, but at least we know how she lived, and we can be thankful for the time we got to spend together. May she rest in more peace than the world gave her while she was alive.
Apparently her family requested that memorial donations from anyone who wants to make them be made to Project Eye to Eye (with her name in the notes field as explanation). That's a kind gesture.
In November 2008 I described her as follows:
Jess is no longer with us, having transferred to the University of Chicago because it offered academic possibilities that Reed did not, but she was Kaylee's roommate in Sullivan last year and hung about for a bit at the start of this year in the fantasy dorm before going off to the UoC. Jess is very strong-willed, takes no nonsense, and is as compassionate for those who cares about as she is scornful of those who hurt the former category or herself. Also she appears Jewish: bonus? Jess won't come up much, as she's simply not here, but her absence makes itself felt sometimes.As is clear from the above, she came back a semester later and stayed on from there. Freshman year, at a time when most of us were struggling to fit in and worrying that we weren't smart enough for the college and the other people around us, Jess was able to criticize Reed's academics, seek out another way to get the education she wanted, pursue that, and get it, all in very little time at all. She came back because she missed Reed (though I'm sure the full story is more detailed and is now between her and the unknown), but that too was her decision. No matter how much shit was going on in her life, and it tended to, Jess always managed to be more on top of things than the people around her and figure out what she had to do in all sorts of situations. It doesn't make any sense to try to list the things that seemed to go wrong for her at various points; the important thing is that she always rebounded.
Jess was open, honest, and caring. She was fun to be around and able to talk about the deepest subjects, abstract (given that she left in response to deficiencies in the Philosophy department) or personal (to herself or others), or to switch between the two modes. She liked dogs, cute things, and the people around her. She was involved in the fine arts and got excited when she met excited people. She had emotions and that was not something she had to apologize for. She was Jewish, and questioned it, and invested consideration into exactly what that meant for her (which definitely changed over time) instead of accepting anything blindly. Jess was a critical thinker.
Jess was responsible and dedicated. She was committed to Project Eye To Eye, an organization about matching younger people with various psychological irregularities (disorders, learning disabilities, and so on) with similarly irregular mentors. Last I heard, she had gotten her own weekly office hours in a supervisory position -- office hours I was impressed by and always intended to visit but now never will. I don't know what was going on in Jess's head, but, again, she seemed to be able to overcome it gracefully. I don't know when she started working with Eye To Eye, either, but she was in there for a while, was able to work with a variety of people (on both sides of the mentoring equation), and elicited respect and friendship from her coworkers. The closest I ever personally came to working with was, I believe, for Reed-Lane Day one year (or maybe some other similar event -- the details are hazy) when we were among the people coordinating bringing a group of youngsters to the school to check it out and encourage them to do well in their studies and stuff. I forgot how her last name was pronounced over the phone and she gave me grief thereafter. Jess had a cutting, but never malicious, quick sense of humor, and made jokes that would stay with people for months or longer after the fact, but was not self-absorbed about it and always appreciated the friends around her and valued their humor and insights both.
I never knew much about Jess besides the things she was doing then, when I would see her. There were rumors about her conflicts with other people I won't go into, and she came out positively in them. I don't know much about her future plans, other than that she had them. Just a few days before she died she was looking for summer housing, and we were offering her a place here. I wish that could have happened. I don't know many details about her past, either, in part just because I'm apparently really bad at remembering that stuff. When I mentioned her (cultural) heritage in an email freshman year, she responded: "I do, unfortunately, the heritage I have a firm grasp of is my mother's Italian history." That was Jess... her language wasn't flowery, she didn't suck up to people, she didn't pretend things that weren't true, but she was brilliant and giving and responsible. We don't know how or why she died, but at least we know how she lived, and we can be thankful for the time we got to spend together. May she rest in more peace than the world gave her while she was alive.
Apparently her family requested that memorial donations from anyone who wants to make them be made to Project Eye to Eye (with her name in the notes field as explanation). That's a kind gesture.