Stephen "Steve" Dickinson '07 (BardCorps)
Files
Interviewee Role
Alumni/ae/x
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Class Year
2007
Academic Program
Economics
Interviewer
Chris Pryslopski '97
Description
Steven Dickinson’s mother had to convince him to go to Bard – he wanted to go somewhere closer to home. He’s glad he listened. As soon as he arrived, Dickinson found himself in a challenging environment. “I was very straight edge, early to rise, exercised a lot,” he recalls. “They threw me in with this punk rocker from Maine. Which was great – it really broke me out of my bubble.”
Dickinson connected with people mostly through the cross-country team. He was around for the final Drag Race, before the college shut the yearly blow-out down. “What a scene,” he says of the Old Gym. “Being able to spray paint on the walls really made it about the students and about expression.” What is he glad he wasn’t caught doing? “Smoking pot down at the Hudson River,” he laughs.
“I love Bard for the place, the environment that it is,” he says, recalling the many great conversations he had – shallower topics pervade in “the real world,” he adds. He talks to other alums about this atmosphere, which he can’t quite define.
Dickinson took a long time before settling on economics as a major. “They let me write a thesis that was very hippy economics,” he says. “I tried to evaluate potential social and monetary value of the potential removal of a dam on the Fishkill Creek.”
Keywords
Arizona State University; SMOG; The Old Gym; ‘Random Bard Encounters’ (RBE); DC++; Napster; Nicholas Risko ‘07; Bard College; Mary Washington College; Nevada Griffin ‘07; Kline Commons; Liz Herbert; Baltimore, Maryland; Arizona; Phoenix, Arizona; Acid Mothers Temple; Woodstock, New York; Hudson River; Tivoli, New York; Drag Race; Manor House; SM Aces; Fishkill Creek; Jack Kerouac; California; SolarCity
Location
BardCorps Trailer, Main Campus.
Interview Date
5-26-2012
Interview Duration
16:22
Recommended Citation
Dickinson '07, Stephen, "Stephen "Steve" Dickinson '07 (BardCorps)" (2021). BardCorps -- All Oral Histories. 73.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/oral_hist/73
Rights Management
The use of any image or audio from the Bard College Archives without permission is prohibited.
Significant Quote
"Maybe Bard has a reputation for being academically rigorous, but I never felt a ton of pressure to perform in a certain way. I was able to kinda take my time getting in to the topic which for me was good– I don't perform that well under pressure."