Name: Barbara Marquez
Pronouns: She/Her
Hometown: Miami, Florida
Major: Physics
Class: 2019
What has your journey through POSSE been like?
My journey through POSSE has been learning to live with ten other sisters that, over the course of the past two and a half years I have gotten to know them really well, to the point that whenever they need help on something, I already have background so that I know how to help them, support them, or be with them. That’s the biggest marker of POSSE for me— learning to be in a sisterhood culture.
Was Mount Holyoke your first POSSE school choice?
That’s a complicated question because it ended up being my first choice but I initially wanted to choose Pomona College. Given my family situation where I thought my mom was going to live in New York, I thought it would be a really messy situation to have my mom in New York, my dad in Florida, and then be in California. So through a family decision and advice I took from a lot of people, who told me this women’s liberal arts college might be really good for me, I took the recommendation and I put Mount Holyoke down as my first choice.
What led you to POSSE?
I had never heard of POSSE until my high school counselor recommended it to me. She told me I would be really good for it, since I was really outgoing and I loved being in a group of people. The appeal of POSSE is the group component because you get to go to school with a group of people that are a support system and she thought I would make a great fit in a group like that.
What has your journey been like at Mount Holyoke? What have you learned since being here?
Mount Holyoke is a really particular place to be, in the sense that it is not something that you walk into and immediately fall in love with — for some people it’s like that if this was their dream school — but for me, not really having a set dream or expectations, Mount Holyoke was a learning experience more than anything. This campus is very different from the rest of the world in the sense that I have felt extremely comfortable at Mount Holyoke being myself, like physically, emotionally, mentally. It’s definitely a space where I don’t worry about myself as much in terms of identity, which is actually ironic because you’d think that there is a social pressure to know your identity at Mount Holyoke when really Mount Holyoke allows you to explore the intersectionality of who you really are. On top of that, being a physics major, Mount Holyoke has provided this incredible home for me to be a STEM woman comfortably without feeling the pressure of the male-dominated field, and I also love the fact the professors are so personal and available to us. I could be in my PJs at ten o’clock at night in the physics lounge getting help from a professor, so it has been awesome!
Has there been any particular hard times that you’d like to share? What resources did you use?
The biggest thing that has affected me at Mount Holyoke being from Miami is Seasonal Affective Disorder. It gets dark around four or five o’clock here in the winter which is actually… even in Miami winters, the sun sets at six or seven o’clock, so that became really hard for me because it gives me the feeling that the whole school has been winding down and everyone is in their rooms alone doing work and I feel so out of place I don’t know what to do with myself in the evenings, especially since the sun sets so early. So what I started doing was actually the easiest thing to do which is actually talking to other people and asking tham to meet up to do homework after class, to meet up to have dinner, because when you start staying alone in your own solitude, in your room, [the loneliness] gets worse. But when you realize that the life hasn’t died on campus, that the nighttime is when everyone is working, having dinner, getting together (you don’t notice that in your room)… if you hit people up and actually go places you notice that life is still going on and you feel less lonely and you get to share that in the company of other people.
What is it like to be the CA of the French floor?
French floor is a very fun place to work! I love it because I think that being in Living and Learning Communities is a better place to be because it binds people under a common cause unlike on a regular floor where what people have in common is that they chose to come to Mount Holyoke one way or another. But that’s nothing specific. When a group of people who have at least one goal in common, which is to learn or practice French, amongst other things, come together into an actual living community, it’s easier to have people bond and share experiences because of that commonality. Working on the French floor has also been an exploration of culture for me because I’m not French, I’m not from a francophone country, so this is an exploration of a third culture for me since I’m American and Hispanic; this is a learning experience for me going into francophone-led community. I love it.
What got you interested in French?
I wanted to learn a third language, and I wanted to learn a third language that was going to be useful for me. French is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world and I made sure to look that up. Also being in the physics field I’ve seen that a lot of scientists were French, and at the time — and I don’t know if I’ll do this anymore — I was excited at the prospect of reading scientific reports in French. I don’t know about that now, but yeah, that’s what it was.
What do you love about physics?
Physics is the hard science of the world and I am very fact-driven in the sense that my single most interest in the world is finding out why we’re here and how the world works. I chose a major that was going to help me explore the functionality of the universe we are in which is exactly what I want to do. And the question of how we are here, also gets answered along the way because I feel like the more scientific you get, the deeper into physics you get, the deeper into engineering sciences you get, the more religious you get because the deeper you go the more questions there are unanswered and then you start to kind of wonder what divine powers are in play, so it’s a very spiritual experience for me because it fulfills my curiosities but also makes me question above and beyond the metaphysical reality we live in.
Going off of that, has any event in college led you to a renewed spiritual connection?
In my physics classes [laughs] believe it or not. The professors here are very invested in you understanding the very root of everything you do. Physics classes here are so different because you don’t learn formulas, you learn the processes that led to formulas and in that process you leave so many things unanswered that you know the underlying messages are something beyond what we can physically explore.
Any special on-campus or off-campus activities you would like to mention?
I think something special that’s maybe not considered a club or activity is taking classes off-campus, the biggest benefit of the Five College Consortium. I’ve taken two classes at Amherst, both religious classes — Intro to Buddhist Traditions and right now I’m taking Qur’an Controversies — so I am exploring the different religions like I said. As part of the physics process, religion also comes into play. Another off-campus activity… I dance salsa, so American Legion, which is in Hadley, has Salsa Friday Nights and I participate in those.
Where do you see yourself in the future? Do you have any travel plans?
I actually don’t look into the future as often as I should. I used to be obsessed with the idea that everything I do in the present must add up to something in the future. But I felt like the more I planned out my life the less things went according to plan in the best sense possible. When I actually let go of life and live in the present moment — which means doing what feels right at the moment, doing what is good for me in that moment — those little things add up to a future experience, so I don’t know what job I’m going to have, I don’t know where I’m going to go, but I know where I am right now and that’s all that matters to me.
Do you miss your hometown? Would you continue to live there?
I do, definitely. After being here for two years you get into this awkward position where you don’t know whether Mount Holyoke is home or if Miami is home because both of them are now instilled in you. So I do miss the sunshine and glory, but I don’t know if I could ever go back to a place with a single season even though it was where I lived my whole life.
What is POSSE?
A significant amount of this profile has to do with POSSE, so I have decided to explain it so you can better understand Barbara’s journey through Mount Holyoke with the program. POSSE is a scholarship program that covers a student’s full tuition and puts them in a group of ten other students who also won the scholarship as a support system to keep each other going during their college journey. This group aspect is a unique feature of POSSE. The group of ten is meant to be more than a support group but a friendship system that pushes you to do your best. POSSE has chapters in certain cities, usually those with minorities and/or low income areas where the students there most likely wouldn’t have had the chance to go to high-costing institutions. There is POSSE Miami, POSSE Chicago, and POSSE Boston, for example. Some of the schools POSSE Miami works with are our own beloved Mount Holyoke, Syracuse University, Hamilton College, and Pomona College. Each POSSE chapter works with different schools, and the aim is usually to move the student out of their home state so they can gain a broader perspective and grow as a person. (For example, a person from POSSE Boston would not get Mount Holyoke as a school choice.) The student usually chooses three of the schools they would want to go to that POSSE works with, and POSEE tries to pair you with the school you want, or more importantly, the school that is best for you. This is why, in the profile, Barbara states that she initially wanted to put Pomona College as her first choice but chose Mount Holyoke, and evidently POSSE thought it was a good fit too, because they gave her her first choice.
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