I PACKED THE last of my belongings the morning of my departure for Wesleyan. I had spent time with my parents, Linda, and my brothers the day before. Karen and Teenie were at the house saying goodbye as Uncle Vernon helped place my two large suitcases and my trunk into the rear of his station wagon. Having stayed up late partying with friends the previous night, I was bleary-eyed as he drove me to Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Station.

After helping me check my belongings, Uncle Vernon waited with me in the train station until it was time to board the train. Though tired, I felt a slight adrenaline rush as I settled into my seat on the railcar. In six hours, I would arrive at Meriden station, the closest station to Middletown. A Wesleyan student was scheduled to meet me upon arrival and drive me to campus. I looked out the window, wishing Baltimore a silent farewell before falling asleep.

I was briefly awakened when the conductor in New York asked me to show my ticket again for the last half of the trip. The next thing I knew, he was calling through the railcar, “Meriden is next. Meriden station will be our next station stop.” I went to the restroom and splashed my eyes. I was beginning a brand new life.

Upon arrival, my volunteer driver and I loaded my things into her car, chatting about the school during the twenty-minute trip. We arrived on campus at the Malcolm X house, the African-American specialty house in which I would share a two-room double with my roommate, Michelle. When I arrived, she had claimed the inner, more private room. The outer room was mine. Michelle was a pre-med student from Brooklyn. After we became friends, she called me her artsy-fartsy roommate from Baltimore.

That evening, Michelle and I went to dinner in the dining hall where most of the black students were sitting together on the right side of the cafeteria. We joined them. I was excited to see so many black faces at school. Though in reality, the black population was ten percent of the total populace of my senior class at Park. The ice cream and freshly baked bread were especially delicious, definite contributors to the freshman fifteen.

After dinner, I convinced Michelle to walk with me around campus using the maps we had been given in our welcome packets. As a member of the Baltimore Neighborhood Arts Circus, I had grown accustomed to quickly familiarizing myself with new territory. And I didn’t want to seem lost, but that spoke to control issues, not fear of new places.

I entered Wesleyan planning to pursue a dual major in psychology and theater. Thinking psychology would be an academic fit for me, I enrolled in Foundations of Contemporary Psychology. The course proved more difficult to get through than I expected, when I staggered into depression at the end of the semester.

However, I learned and embraced an applicable psychological truth, Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualization. Maslow depicted human needs being met according to a hierarchical pyramid. He listed physiological needs at the lowest level, followed by the need for safety in body and resources. The middle level, at which many people get stuck, was the need for love and belonging, followed by the self-confidence and respect tier. The pinnacle of the pyramid was self-actualization, where a person perfects herself in the areas of creativity, problem-solving, and lack of prejudice. I saw myself living between levels four and five. As I studied psychology, I believed I would ascend to level five and eventually become a therapeutic helper.

Participants in Introduction to Acting were required to audition. I chose a monologue from Angelina Weld Grimke’s play Rachel as my audition piece. The judging panel of three theater professors included Esteban Vega, a person of color, whose production choices brought multiracial theatrical opportunities to Wesleyan students. Esteban was impressed by my choice from the work of a female playwright who was part of the Harlem Renaissance.

The auditions unearthed so much talent that the panel decided to offer two sections of the course instead of the customary single section. I went to the bookstore to buy my books before the class lists were posted. Seeing the bookstore only stocked enough books for one section, I grabbed the Stanislavsky methods book and placed it in my basket. A classmate who had also auditioned for the class was present at the time. “You’re buying the book?” he questioned. “We don’t even know if we’re in the class.”

“You might not know, but I’ll be chosen for the class,” I responded confidently. Unlike me, my classmate had to wait for the second shipment of books to get his copy.

In October, Esteban planned a trip to Broadway through Ujamaa, the black student union. We saw the matinee performance of Vinette Carrol’s Your Arms Too Short to Box with God followed by an evening performance of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. The first play excited me, being the first Broadway show I had ever seen. The second play amazed me, resonating in my spirit, as the actresses taught me the reality of what women can become when they bind together. At the end of this choreopoem, the women repeat, “I found god in myself & I loved her fiercely.” They embraced the rainbow, the promise of success, rejecting suicidal impulses.

The play was a great companion piece to the female empowerment album I had listened to repeatedly the previous summer, Nightbirds by Labelle, featuring the songs “All Girl Band” and “Lady Marmalade.” Having bought a copy of the play for colored girls, I performed one of the monologues, “Toussaint,” as my final project for Introduction to Acting. As my life continued, reading poems from for colored girls became an essential routine for me.

Besides our resident advisor, everyone who lived on the upper level of the Malcolm X house that year was a young woman. We developed a comradery over the course of the semester. I became especially close with my roommate Michelle as well as Leslie, a female freshman who lived in the Butterfield dorms. Early in the semester, using the list of African American students in the class of 1981 provided by my RA, and in Arts Circus style, I searched out and connected with each of my fellow minority freshmen.

To provide an opportunity for us to know each other, I planned the black freshman party at the Malcolm X house, providing grain alcohol-spiked punch for the attendees. Only seventeen, I enlisted a senior to purchase the alcohol for me. Not a lover of alcohol, I only tasted my concoction; the sweetness of the juice masked the potency of the liquor.

During mid-semester break, I visited Bernice at Williams College. I had planned to catch a bus back to Wesleyan. While there, I ran into the Dean from my school who gave me a ride back to campus. One of Wesleyan’s first African-American graduates, he was interested in how I was enjoying my first semester and inquired about my future plans. I shared my love of theater and my wish to become a children’s psychologist with him. The Dean bought into my enthusiastic confidence.

In November, I was an extra in the play adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son, directed by Esteban. I also assisted the costumer for the play, The Lion in Winter. Students in Introduction to Acting were required to participate in one performance-related activity outside of class. I chose two activities because my mood had heightened. Although my energy level was up, my productivity level decreased.

As my thoughts and behavior began to escalate, I started forgetting things. I left a costume I had repaired for the lead actress in The Lion in Winter in a friend’s room. Because she had gone out of town, I used heightened sensual charm to convince her resident advisor to let me in to retrieve it. I fell behind in attendance at compulsory language lab sessions for my French class and eventually dropped the course.

I got a ride home for Thanksgiving with a hall mate who was spending the holiday in Washington, DC. While at home, I overheard Mama mention my father had developed arthritis in his spine. Processing her words in my emotionally heightened state, I assumed the condition was severe. Irrational thoughts of my father being sick and maybe even dying triggered the strongest melancholy I had ever experienced.

When I returned to campus, I was awash with sadness. I cried often, but I forced myself to memorize my monologue and study for my psychology final. Lacking the energy to complete my final English paper, I arranged an extension with my instructor.

I didn’t want any of my peers to know, but I set up an appointment with the school psychologist. Although it was not my viewpoint, I knew many black people shunned psychotherapy. I slunk from the Malcolm X house to the student behavioral health center located directly behind it.

Philippa Coughlin, Ph.D., founded and directed the Office of Behavioral Health for Students at Wesleyan University beginning in the early 1970s. She was an early pioneer in the field of behavioral health for college students. She worked with Carl Rogers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a doctorate in humanistic psychology. Rejecting psychoanalysis, Rogers taught people how to thrive in an environment of genuineness, acceptance, and empathy. Dr. Rogers believed people self-actualize when their ideal selves and their self-images match. Dr. Coughlin’s therapeutic style was informed by this point of view.

After three sessions with Dr. Coughlin, in which I shared my depression from senior year, we decided I would benefit from a medical leave of absence. I would see a therapist in Baltimore and schedule an appointment with her in September for reinstatement.

I stored some of my belongings at Malcolm X, taking mostly clothing home with me. I assured the friends who expressed concern over my extreme sadness that I would be okay, and they would see me in September. As I boarded the train, I believed my mood would improve and that I would return to Wesleyan for the following fall semester.

Treating this semester as a false start, I rehearsed to myself, being a colored girl, I will move on to the end of my rainbow.