April Cottrell Zoll Close::  All right, my name is April Zoll Close and my maiden name is Cottrell. That’s the name I had when I went to Grinnell, and I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I graduated in 1992.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  So, I came to Grinnell as a transfer student after having gone to a state school in Oregon and it was a little bit of a fluke. I had a friend who said, “You know, you really need to go somewhere else for school,” and he took me to the public library in Salem and opened a book and made me a list of colleges that he thought were of high enough standards for me and were far enough away from where I was growing up.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  And so Grinnell was the list and that’s the one place I applied, and I remember the admissions director met up with me at a Wendy’s in town. I applied and got admitted as a transfer student and that was really exciting, and later I found out that he thought I’d be a great candidate partially because he had children and knew I would be a great babysitter. And I did end up babysitting for him for a couple years, when he was in town.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  So I found myself here in Grinnell after having never been to the Midwest or visited Grinnell. I consider it a really fortunate part of my life story, that I ended up here. There were just wonderful people and I had to work hard. I had, many, many jobs on campus. I worked security and I was a college driver, and I worked for KDIC as an administrative assistant, and I worked at the bookstore, and I was queen of the sack lunch line in Cowles. Which meant, people who didn’t wanna come in for lunch could come at breakfast and show me their ID and pack theirselves a sack lunch. I would also make sandwiches for traveling sports teams, so there’s, you know, roast beef and provolone or whatever. So, a lot of my memories of Grinnell involved the relationships I made through the work that I did.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  I also- there was an Art professor at the time, Timothy Chasson, who was just this really nice guy. I’m not sure what expectations I had of myself or how I found myself here. I felt it was a little bit of a fluke and I was gonna be discovered. I remember he had a meeting with myself and another student and just said, “You know, you guys, you can do something. You’re capable and you have all this potential.” I didn’t end up going into Art History but it’s still something I kind of hold in my heart as something that I love and care about, and that was great. And when I was at Grinnell, they had a program, which I don’t think they have anymore, the Ninth Semester in Education.
Sophie Haas & April Cottrell Zoll Close::  They still do.
Sophie Haas & April Cottrell Zoll Close::  Oh, they still have it? That’s great. And so, that was a funny opportunity for me because I went through and I got my Art History degree and then... I loved being in the town of Grinnell. In the meantime, I had lived in a house. It was called Band-Aid House, but it’s on, it’s now a different color and I don’t even remember the address. But I was living on the first floor with some friends and this other gentlemen moved in upstairs and so we met our senior year because we lived in that house in New Student Days. We dated and were engaged by November and got married in March, and that was sort of an interesting part of my arc.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  So we got married, which was pretty unusual. Not many other of our peers got married for many years. And then I stayed in town and did this Ninth Semester and I think then I even stayed and I subbed at the junior high and worked in town. And I loved being here- oh, and I worked in the Print and Drawing Study Room with Kay Jenkins. And again, she was just so kind and welcoming and this great combination of having high standards but being realistic about, you know, what my life was like at the time. So that was wonderful.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  I think the hardest thing for me at Grinnell was taking a French class. Susan Strauber was my advisor and she was like, “You know, I know there’s no requirements but you really have to take foreign languages,” and I tried, and I just couldn’t learn it. I just couldn’t figure it out and I think that experience made me very empathetic to people who have trouble learning something because I really know what that feels like. To just have it not make any sense no matter what the tutor did and what the professor did it just, it didn’t click for me.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  Coming to campus, you know I haven’t been back very often and so it’s probably been ten years at least since I’ve been back and, it’s beautiful. I mean, it’s more beautiful than it was. This, PE, even the, well, the physical education facility is amazing and the sports fields. My son and I went and hung out at the Observatory last night which I know was here when I was a student and I maybe visited once. But it’s just.. I don’t know how it compares to being at other schools really, but these little couple blocks really became my world. I didn’t have a car when I was a student. I didn’t have any spending money, and all my needs were met in this little space. You know, sort of social and emotional and academic. So, I think that’s something really wonderful about what Grinnell has to offer.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  Let’s see, I wonder if there’s… You know, I don’t know anything about students of today, although I teach at a school in Minneapolis and I teach lower elementary students and there’s a family that’s gone through. The oldest child in that family, who I’ve known for years, is a freshman at Grinnell. So it’s been fun, when he came back, I think I ran into him over the winter holidays, and he talked a little bit about what a great community it has been for him. And that’s just nice to hear that resonance.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  My dorm room? I lived on-campus two of my three years, and I lived in Rawson and in Gates. I had a single and I think the people I feel most connected to are people that I met my first year, living in Rawson. I was very wily and clever and took my bed off its bedframe and tipped the bedframe up to make a little barrier and put a quilt on it. My mattress was on the floor so I had this little private nook in my room.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  But, this was also, you know, long before the days of cell phone and laptops and, y’know going to the computer lab to type a computer on that you had to do all this weird formatting like, point LM5 on this VAX system. It’s hard for me to imagine what college is like for students now, y’know having access to information anywhere you are. And also, we used to spend a lot of time... y’know there’s this boy I had a crush on who was just so lovely. You know, you’d have to wander campus to find him. You couldn’t text him, you couldn’t have that kind of communication.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  So I think it will be interesting. I’m sure there are people looking at this and doing studies and figuring out what life is like for students now when, maybe there’s an expectation that they’re in contact with their families all the time and there’s Skyping and there’s this whole level at which going to college, I think, is different. It used to be, you were really leaving your family and doing something very separate and I wonder if for some students that that separation isn’t as clear anymore? And I’m sure that’s going to have some kind of impact but I don’t know what it is.
April Cottrell Zoll Close::  And then, I think I spent a pretty fair amount of time in the town. I babysat for a couple and the husband was a police officer and the woman was an EMT, and so I kind of got into the town that way and would certainly, y’know, go to the library. I do remember there was a perception, I think, that sometimes town people, especially town hi- y’know high school and college students weren’t very fond of the Grinnell College students and it always felt like they were, when you were crossing the street they were gonna accelerate to try and, you know, make you run across the street faster. I remember being with friends and feeling intimidated about that line of guys that stands at Pagliai’s Pizza in that window. And we’d be, y’know, kind of, pretty happy with ourselves.
April Cottrell Zoll Close & Sophie Haas::  And, you know, thinking about it this weekend, and my kids and I were here for reunion and we went into town and saw the beautiful new library and went to the playground and spent some time, and thinking, "If I had grown up in town and felt like I didn’t have those opportunities, and if I knew the resources that were available on this campus, I think I would be jealous or resentful to some degree," especially about these students who come who might be somewhat affluent or careless with their things in a way that people can be... And I think that’s all.
April Cottrell Zoll Close & Sophie Haas::  Great, thank you so much.
April Cottrell Zoll Close & Sophie Haas::  You’re welcome.
