High on love
Most first years arrive at Rhodes unsure of who they will meet and how they will change. Caitlin appears never to have been so. She exudes a quiet confidence as she sits with one leg on her chair and the other extended onto her bed which is covered in neat piles of paper for a scholarship application. Her dancer’s build speaks of her discipline before even she can.
A first year Psychology student, Caitlin Smithen is an intensely focussed student and dedicated girlfriend. Her boyfriend of 19 months lives back at home in Johannesburg. After just six months of dating, they had decided they would maintain their relationship long distance when Caitlin left for Rhodes. It wasn’t a tough decision she says, but being apart is more difficult that they could have anticipated.
Any fights they have are purely because of miscommunication.
“You can’t have a proper conversation with someone via SMS. We call each other every night but it’s hard not having him here to physically hold me.”The difficulties often lie in understanding exactly what is going on in each other’s lives without fully being immersed in their situation.
His creativity is part of what made her fall for him. For Valentines Day (only a week after they had met at a family friend’s 50th) he made her sign a contract to be his Valentine.
“And promise me to have dinner with him that night!”Her playful flicks of sandy-blonde hair bounce around as she laughs at the memory. He later proudly presented her with “Cupid’s poops” (chocolate covered raisins) which he had brought as “evidence” back from asking Cupid’s permission to go on a date with her.
The interview is interrupted with a vibey message tone from her cell phone. “Sorry, I have to answer this” she says politely, playing with the cross around her neck with one hand and SMSing with the other. Sliding the phone closed she immediately refocuses on the interview with pensive responses about the difficulties of a long distance situation, especially when she goes out.
“You can’t fully let loose when guys have no skaam. They are persistent even when they know you have a boyfriend.”She advises people in the same situation to relax because you can’t understand or analyse what the other person is or is not doing when you aren’t with them.
Even though she describes the two of them as being opposites, it is clear their passion with which they live their lives is shared. “He puts his all into everything that he does” she remarks, whether it is working as a guide on school camps or in a bar. She herself is very committed to going to gym and spinning regularly, so much so that she has made friends with the instructors and the classes are “no longer a challenge.” It is apparent that hard work is not something she shies away from. Caitlin hopes to later apply her interest in sport to her degree in Psychology, the career path she decided on in sixth grade.
Hearing her speak lovingly about her “very conservative” parents and even more so about Mike, it’s apparent that her upbringing put her in good stead for university pressures which she handles with an enviable maturity and grace. She just wouldn’t have it any other way.
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1 comments:
Caitlin Smithen is, according to this blog profile, a hero with regard to long-distance relationships. Vladimir Propp categorises characters into seven categories, one of which is the hero. In this case, Caitlin is the one who abandons comfort and experiences what Todorov, a Bulgarian philosopher, calls a disruption of equilibrium. This equilibrium (having a boyfriend who lives in the same city as her) is disrupted when she leaves home to come to Rhodes and at the same time leaves him behind. The interviewer seems very at ease with Caitlin and her story but at the same time is slightly hostile towards the idea of a long-distance relationship.
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