Paige Elliott

I have recently converted to the newest, truest religion sweeping Vanderbilt’s campus in an immense, divine Wave. Now I take up my pen to share my joy with my fellow students, and to inform them of the one true Faith. Here are the top five reasons you should convert to the worship of our lord and savior, Bob Red Mill, today.

1. His Apple Pieces and Cinnamon Oatmeal

Bob’s Apple Pieces and Cinnamon Oatmeal is the most perfect oatmeal ever to exist in this world. This is only natural, as the works of Bob were not formulated in this world, with its mean narrow minds and arbitrary physical limits. Bob Red Mill stretched down his hand from his Mill among the stars and gifted to His first devotees the secret of His delicious microwaveable oatmeal. To those who seek to understand its mysteries, who spread the sugar mixture among the oats in the correct motions and sequence, it reveals wisdom from the stardust realm of the Great Cereals, beyond the Milky Way. And like all of His greatest works, it is Gluten Free! A miracle!

2. His Blueberry Hazelnut Oatmeal

Bob’s Blueberry Hazelnut Oatmeal is an ecstatic experience beyond our rational understanding. Simply taste this oatmeal once, properly mixed by the spoon of a devotee, and you will ascend to another state of existence, nay, a new state of being. The blueberries, dark and luscious! The hazelnuts, subtle and nutty! The hint of salt, the mingling of Opposites, savory and sweet…! Oh, it is not possible to convey in our limited human language the brilliance of Bob Red Mill’s Blueberry Hazelnut Oatmeal. And this, too, is Gluten Free. Wonder of wonders!

3. His benevolent Visage

His wondrous Face beams out from the top of every oatmeal cup, giving us leave to contemplate His divine image. His friendly Gaze, his light blue hat, his skinny Southern tie with the buckle thing on it, his immaculate white Mustache and Beard. He looks like a grandfather, or a wise old uncle. This is a trustworthy Face, a reassuring Face. As a devout worshiper of Bob Red Mill, I have achieved enlightenment; my only remaining desire in this life is to sit beside Him at his Mill and hear his stories of the worlds beyond the Great Cereals.

4. His Bounty of miscellaneous food products and assorted grains

Bob Red Mill, in His greatness, did not only give us exceptional oatmeals, but also a wide range of whole-grain and other food products. His grains are ground with holy quartz millstones in several 120-year-old mills, if they are not older, representations on this mortal plane of His supreme Red Mill beyond the Milky Way. He has imparted unto us more than 400 products that we know of, and perhaps many more that we do not. According to Becky Hughes at Epicurious.com, just 8 Bob’s Red Mill products will change the way you cook–forever. This prophetess of Bob informs us that these are the flours, grains, and starches your pantry is missing. Is it such a stretch to imagine that Bob Red Mill might also provide the cosmic grains and starches that your spirit is missing?

5. The unique perfection of His doctrine

Of course, those unbelievers seeking to undermine our dogma always seem to come to the same fundamental issue, and it is a valid theological question, to be sure. If all the rest of His works so magnificent, why did He create his–I shudder to speak its name–Gluten Free Classic Oatmeal? What place has this abomination, this flavorless, strangely acidic monstrosity, among His revealed Oatmeals? Well, in answer I pose another question. Why would any god permit evil in the world? If you can come to any conclusion that satisfies you, take that conclusion and insert Gluten Free Classic Oatmeal wherever you see evil or sin. Then ask yourself: Can evil or sin as defined in your belief system be made palatable to a moral man with only a sparing addition of natural sugar? It cannot; in fact, ours is the only religion in which such a transformation can be achieved. These are the Wonders of Bob Red Mill; these are his divine Mysteries. Search your conscience, and you will know He truly deserves your reverence, and your meal swipes.  No meal swipe spent on Bob’s Red Mill is ever truly lost, but rather multiplied and magnified in His glory.   Bob Red Mill, most ancient of the Ancient Grains, Milliner of Kings!

In conclusion: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and Bob is the Breakfast of our souls. So it has been Written, and so it shall remain.

If you’ve ever wondered about the crazy facts, creepy stories, and…other aspects of Vanderbilt and its history that Admissions won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, you’ll love this great list of weird stuff I found on the internet! From the Scooby-Doo equivalent of insurance fraud to secret government science projects to, uh, some technicalities about trees, here are MCL’s top five urban legends that are actually, probably, true.

1. Cornelius Vanderbilt may have been the victim of a paranormal inheritance scheme.

The Commodore’s involvement with spiritualism was long, eventful, and occasionally scandalous. I cannot recommend strongly enough this fascinating article that deals with it more extensively. After the Commodore’s death, he left around 95% of his considerable estate to his son William, leaving comparatively little to his one other surviving son and nine daughters, according to Wikipedia (but it’s totally reputable, I swear). Three of the children sued, stating that their elderly father was not in his right mind and unduly influenced by William when he drew up the will and therefore it was not valid.

The juiciest of these allegations was that William paid a spiritualist employed by Cornelius, a Mr. Stoddard, to claim that William was the only trustworthy child who should inherit, and that the rest hated him and eagerly awaited his demise. Stoddard reportedly followed orders, going into a “trance” and pretending to channel the spirit of William’s dead mother Sophia, Cornelius’ first wife.

Although the disputing children lost the case after a two-year trial (Cornelius had always been noted for his incredibly strong, stubborn will and William had served as operations manager of his business empire in his final years), their brother did afterward grant his siblings a greater share of his inheritance, probably to avoid further scandal but hopefully also out of some positive fraternal feeling. As for the truth of the matter with the lying psychic, now only the ghosts know for sure.

2. There’s a (possibly) haunted cemetery on Vanderbilt campus.

On the topic of the undead, you may have noticed that there are a few statues, plaques, and other features resembling actual gravesites on campus. The fabulously named Bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire, who has been called the driving force behind the founding of Vanderbilt University, is interred in a cemetery behind the Divinity School along with his wife, Amelia Townsend; Landon Garland, Vandy’s first chancellor; and several prominent bishops from the area whose graves Bishop McTyeire actually had moved to campus soon after its founding. (Gross.)

Chancellor Kirkland’s 1893 inaugural address noted of McTyeire, “[U]nder the shade of magnolias that his own hand planted, he sleepeth well.” McTyeire’s headstone–though luckily not his remains, and hopefully not his ghostly emanation–wandered Vanderbilt campus quite a bit after his burial, finally ending up in the Office of the University Chaplain and Religious Life in 2014. And yes, there are nonspecific rumors of his cemetery being haunted.

Unfortunately for anyone of the gothic persuasion among MCL’s readership, there’s no official map of the gravesites, headstones, and other memorials on Vanderbilt campus, but if there is a zombie apocalypse we have to assume the campus epicenter would be the Divinity School cemetery, meaning the undead would probably reach freshman housing in the order of Towers, Branscomb, and finally Commons, and optimistically they might be prevented from reaching Commons by traffic on 21st Avenue. Just another perk to living in Towers!

3. The Free Electron Laser was originally built to defend against missile attacks.

The Vanderbilt University Free Electron Laser was originally developed by the Department of Defense as part of a missile defense program. However, its medical capabilities were soon prioritized, and in 2000 it was one of only five FEL centers in the country and the only one equipped to perform, and successful in performing, surgical operations. That year, in the first ever clinical use of such an instrument, a surgical team led by Dr. Michael Copeland used the FEL to remove a three centimeter-wide section of a golf ball-sized tumor on the surface of a woman’s brain.

The patient, 78-year-old Virginia Whitaker from Kansas City, wasn’t frightened by the fact that she was the first person ever to undergo such a procedure; in fact, she said of the surgery, “I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to help other people in my situation as well as to help the doctors learn more. That’s why I did it….For me, this had to be done no matter what, so it’s good that maybe it can help other people too.”

4. There’s a colony of monkeys in Wilson Hall.

Macaques, specifically. The monkeys are housed in an AAALAC-accredited animal care facility and used in psychology research. Since this Top 5 is very much not a robust or possibly even accurate academic source, you can learn much more about the Schall Lab’s monkey business at http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/schall/projects/. There appear to be three major projects running, along with some collaborative projects on the side; the major projects involve the neurological activity underlying target selection (for example, finding a T among Ls or an L among Ts), neural control and monitoring of saccadic eye movements, and Stochastic models of cognition and neurons.

5. The Vanderbilt campus is (kind of!) an arboretum.

It’s complicated. Vandy was first called an arboretum in May 1879 by a publication called “Vanderbilt University Contributions 1878-79” found in the Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives, which was, documentation-wise, the sole basis of its claims to arboretum-ness for most of its history. To be fair, there isn’t really one official definition of an arboretum out there; several organizations that accredit them have been founded more recently, and they tend to have different criteria.

The Vanderbilt arboretum really is impressive. It hosted 6,181 labeled trees in 2013, the oldest and most iconic being the Bicentennial Oak, which was alive during the Revolutionary War. The arboretum website is pretty cool and includes a list of “Ghost Trees of Vanderbilt Past,” which is wonderfully dramatic. (The URL is also excellent.)

In 1988 Vandy was registered as an arboretum with the American Public Gardens Association, and in October 2020 it received Level II out of IV accreditation from ArbNet, an international arboretum certification organization. Initially I thought that Level I was the pinnacle of academic arboriculture and therefore we aren’t far off, but in reality, the highest level of achievement is Level IV. (Harvard has it. Grr.) Achieving Level II does of course have some impressive and stringent criteria, but as I am not an arboriculturalist I was distracted laughing at the requirement that there be “one or more arboretum employees.”

Nowhere on the ArbNet website could I find the term “national arboretum,” and ArbNet is, in fact, an international organization. Furthermore, my research suggests that while there exists the US National Arboretum in DC, being a national arboretum…isn’t a real thing. Lacking the patience for such fine distinctions, the Vanderbilt official website does in fact state that we are a national arboretum; finding this hilariously bold and completely unqualified claim was the highlight of my research. (If it’s not there when you read this, it means someone in Admissions read my article and edited it out, in which case on one hand I’m flattered and thank you for reading, but on the other hand you are now my enemy and shall remain so until death.)

If you want more information, you can check out this great Hustler article on the subject! Tree geeks.

Bonus! Two more wild stories…

6. In other Cornelius news, Cornelius Vanderbilt apparently once said, “If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else.” This makes slightly more sense when you consider the various sources stating that he funded the university at his second wife’s request. Fascinatingly enough, the admissions website also attributes to him the quote, “Though I never had any education, no man has ever felt the lack more than I have, and no man appreciates the value of it more than I do and believes more than I do what it will do in the future.” Is this evidence of character growth?  Character deterioration?  Who knows; I couldn’t find dates for the quotes.

7. Al Gore dropped out of Vanderbilt twice, first failing out of the Divinity School and then leaving Vandy’s law school, and he was particularly badly at college science. Apparently he and Bill Clinton “shared one surprising trait from their school years, a tendency to procrastinate on subjects that did not enthrall them and then cram at the last minute.” Same. Check out this Washington Post article for a more complete account of his trials and travails; I hope it gives the chem students some comfort, or at least dulls the pain. We probably should’ve published this closer to midterms.

1. Seeing your pets

Needs no explanation.  Generally people’s top priority.

2. Getting coffee from *your* Starbucks

Or, like, taco place, mall outlet, favorite DMV building, etc.  That sort of thing.  Personally, I buy my coffee at home from an unaffiliated coffee shop with pretentious bookshelves, lots of hipsters, and, allegedly, roaches.  A dealbreaker for many, but luckily I haven’t yet seen one with my own eyes, so I will continue to order my tall coffee latte boba with medium ice about once every two weeks and very deliberately not look under the furniture.

3. Seeing your family

Haven’t you missed throwing down with your siblings physically and verbally over your/their clothing while your mom stands in the doorway telling you to eat more fruit?  Ah, those were the days.

4. Pets again

But will Geoffrey the banana snake remember me??  (Hint: It’s unlikely.)

5. Your home climate

Some of us are going home to a nice balmy 65 degree winter with minimal wind, fashionable but not particularly durable sweaters, and hot chocolate mainly prepared for aesthetic reasons.  Some of us are going home to wear six layers in ten inches.  If you belong to the latter category, please know that as a Californian who dodged the wildfires and heatwave-induced power outages, I will be laughing at you for the entire break.

1. Check your travel dates against tests and major assignments

You may have to work ahead on something, so now is a very good time to check!  I, personally, have a thesis and report due the evening that I fly out.  I definitely would not want to be discovering that conflict in the middle of packing frantically at 2 a.m. the night before.

2. Make sure you’re clear on your state’s travel restrictions

Linked here is a very nice alphabetized list with some extra state-specific considerations noted, although you can also find plenty of other resources by just googling your state if you’re, say, a Wisconsin native and too lazy to scroll down a page or two.

3. Strategically schedule your next load of laundry

If you’re totally okay with stuffing a bunch of dirty clothes and sheets in a box to marinate in their own sweat stains for two months, then by all means ignore this one.  Otherwise, you should probably try to get one last load in a few days before you go so you can pack all of your remaining dirty stuff in your suitcase to wash and fumigate in the comfort of your own home.  If you’re on Commons this semester, you may want to try to do this a little earlier than the rest of us, given what’s been said about the tragic (or nonexistent) state of many of the houses’ laundry rooms.

4. Get a few days ahead on work

This is sort of an addendum to Recommendation #1.  Even if you don’t need to take jetlag into account, no one is going to want to be writing a whole paper, perfecting an instrument solo, or finishing up a lab report the day after five-to-ten hours of travel (or more!), so it’s probably a good idea to finish everything for the next day or two before you head out.  I’m saying this mostly because my Psych textbook taught me that two great ways to motivate yourself to achieve a goal are to write it down and tell people about it.  Whether I, personally, will actually muster the self-discipline to do this is extremely uncertain.  But it’s still good advice!

5. Take a break to notice how pretty campus is

If you are, like me, from a region not blessed with the tiny bundles of joy men call chipmunks in anywhere near the abundance Nashville seems to take for granted, then make sure you stop and pay attention, next time you see a chipmunk, to how absolutely adorable they are!  And also, sure, golden hour here is incredible; for maybe an hour before sunset all the red brick is warm and glowy and the falling leaves catch the sunlight on their way down, and the sky is a fantastic gradient of blues, and all the really good sunsets reflect beautifully off the windows on 25th Ave.  I highly recommend taking a walk somewhere around 4 p.m. before you head home. 🙂