Ada Monologues

Ask an Ada Comstock Scholar what she did before coming to Smith, and you’re likely to get some amazing answers.

That was the correct presumption behind the first Ada Monologues, a series of essays written and performed by Adas about their non-traditional, and often moving, paths to Smith. The first Ada Monologues took place on Friday, April 20, in Graham Hall, Hillyer. Click on the excerpts below to read transcripts, in their entirety, of some of the essays performed.

A Mother’s Story

By Edith Estrella-Ramos AC

Before the sunrise, before the birds start chirping, before people go to work, before children go to school, my mother woke up. She went through the six floors of the building we lived in to collect industrial-sized garbage bags. She swept and mopped every floor and took the garbage bags to the curb so the trucks can pick them up. She went back to our apartment, showered, got dressed, and woke her three children for school. Then, she went to her other two jobs as a nanny. 

The Jacket

By Dawn Ginnetti AC

This Smith College jacket is my favorite article of clothing. The story of my life is woven into this fabric…my hopes, my dreams, my failures, my triumphs, laughter, love, heart ache, disappointment and joy, all woven into this jacket that I’m wearing.

Mr. Mac’s Love Attack

By Cora Lee Drew AC

I cut the perfect line with my paintbrush between the white ceiling and the wall that’s becoming red from white. My experience tells me that going slower gives me a crisper line and I can make it look straight even when the wall itself is not. Amazing! For a brief moment satisfaction wells up inside me. “BIG ____ING DEAL!!!”