Courtesy of Opinion Staff/Headshot of Contributing Writer Abby Charak
My grandmother — Bubbe to us, Rita to everyone else — graduated from Emory University in 1958. Often, as a misfired sales pitch of her alma mater, she shared with my sister and me: “Did you know that Emory requires students to pass a swim test to graduate?”
Emory removed this requirement long ago, but my sister was not exactly a fan of the water, nor was she a fan of Rita’s pointed commentary on sensitive topics like our weight, dating history or (lack of) religious enthusiasm. My sister began to resent Emory and what it represented as the alma mater of my grandmother. As the younger sister who constantly vied for, yet rarely received, her attention and approval, I did the same.
It might be surprising that both my sister and I ended up at Emory. Furthermore, we are two of this University’s biggest fans. Neither of us could imagine attending college anywhere else. Emory, to me, is more than a college campus: It is a family legacy.
Rita was born in Atlanta in 1938. The Atlanta of her memory is different from the one that I live in. In Rita’s Atlanta, she and her siblings can pick up five-cent hot dogs at The Varsity. Emory Village is filled with kitschy mom-and-pop shops. Her father, a Polish-Jewish immigrant, can buy shares in a start-up soda company called Coca-Cola and later sell those shares when he tried it and hated the taste. Her family is part of a tight-knit Jewish community that is still reeling from the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank.
One day in 2017, my sister came home from school, surprised that Emory was not just some school attended by her grandmother — it was actually a good school. Rita’s miscalculated attempts to convince my sister and me to care about Emory and her upbringing became rare common ground for us to bond over. But my sister was growing up. Even if she was no longer resentful of my family history, she had reached a point of ambivalence at least.
My sister left her lingering resentment behind, but those feelings began welling up inside me. After years of trying to win my sister’s approval — liking what she liked, doing what she did — it still felt like I was a fly on her bedroom wall. In high school, all of my favorite teachers were once hers. I dreaded the inevitable question on the first day: “Are you Hannah’s sister?” I became irritated by the constant comparisons made by others and by myself.
As the oldest of five, I imagine Rita navigated several complicated sibling relationships of her own. Rita and her siblings grew up in two houses very close to Emory’s campus. One of the houses was, according to family legend, turned into what is now The University Inn at Emory. The other is right next to Sunken Garden Park in one of the most picturesque neighborhoods I have ever seen. She attended the University of Georgia for a year before she transferred to Emory, a school so close to home that she walked to campus every day.
My sister found herself loving Atlanta and its charming neighborhoods like the one Rita grew up in by the Sunken Garden and walked through on her way to classes. Very quickly, my sister found her calling studying history. As post-graduate living in New York City and a soon-to-be history Ph.D. candidate at Yale University (Conn.), she longs for Atlanta’s urban tranquility and keeps close contact with her former professors. I remember overhearing her phone calls to my mother while she was a student. At that point, she no longer resented Emory — she loved it. I grew classically envious of her college life; academically and socially, she was thriving.
When it was my turn to apply to college, this family history — that both my grandmother and my sister paved — felt more like a curse than a blessing. I was obsessed with attending college on the East Coast; any school in New England would do. I was desperate to forge a new path and diverge from my family roots. Most importantly, I needed to escape the looming shadow of my older sister.
I regarded — and still regard — both my grandmother and my sister as two driven, intelligent women. Perhaps that is why their shadows and legacies were so intimidating as I was growing up. As the youngest in my family, it felt like I never had an opportunity to strike out on my own. By going to Emory, I asked myself, was I just cowering behind their shadows once again?
When I stepped onto Emory’s campus as a first-year student, I decided to take English, creative writing and philosophy classes: all departments unscathed by my family legacy. But forming a new identity was harder than I could have ever imagined. I spent many nights awake in my lofted bed in Dobbs Hall (a dorm so old Rita could have lived there, had Emory allowed women to live on campus while she attended), wondering if I was good enough to stand out.
I felt like my first year of college was not living up to my preconceived expectations, largely formed by the tales of college life I had heard in bits and pieces from my sister. Thankfully, I had my family legacy: two people who had already gone through what I was going through in the very same place. To work through these complicated feelings, I found myself leaning onto my family for support.
I began texting my sister nearly every day asking for advice about friends, classes, going out on weekends or even asking if she knew someone I had just met. Soon enough, she was doing the same. For the first time, she saw our conversations as valuable and not as an obligation to her annoying younger sister. I do not think my sister and I would have the strong relationship we do today if I had not chosen Emory. Thanks to Emory, my sister is one of my most important confidants.
As I wrapped up my second semester, my grandfather passed away the week before my final exams. I look back at the time of my grandfather’s passing as perhaps the most overwhelming time of my life. But experiencing communal grief with my family, I realized that the pressure I put on myself to stand out was, for lack of better words, not that deep.
I also realized that the burden of being a college student — the social, emotional and academic pressures that come with being a young adult — does not have to be shouldered on my own. I no longer feel that I must forget my family history at Emory to make an individual mark on Emory’s campus. Instead, I see it as something that sets me apart. I feel incredibly lucky to have access to the knowledge that my sister and my grandmother possess, even if it is at times incorrect or even problematic.
Emory as an institution is far from perfect, and so is my family. But with the hindsight of time and nearly two years of college experience, I know why Bubbe loves Emory. It is all more than she could tell us in a sales pitch. So, she told us about the swim test.
Abby Charak (26C) is from Chicago.
