[Guest Post] A Day in the Life of a Clown College Student by Ellie F. '28

I wake up at 6:07am to my alarm clock, which squirts water at me while blasting Entry of the Gladiators. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0CyOAO8y0

It’s a special day for me, because on the same day last year, I received a letter in my mailbox that would change my life forever. 

I initially was skeptical—after all, I didn’t recall submitting any application to a “Clown College” on CommonApp. Perhaps those car insurance scammers are getting more clever?

It did seem too good to be true. This was the exact opportunity I was looking for. In my senior year of high school, I had gotten into amateur juggling and realized my true dream: not to graduate from some generic school like MIT and become an engineer or physicist or mathematician like society was telling me, but to drop out of college and run off to the circus. 

My friends and teachers told me choosing to go to Clown College would only turn me into a juggling homeless person⁠01 unsolicited plug: come see Next Act (that stands for next amateur clown trope) during CPW where I will actually be a juggling homeless person in <i>The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals </i>:D) , and that I would never be the next Bozo the Clown, or Ronald McDonald, or not even at least Pennywise.

But I kept chasing my dreams of someday hiding in a sewer drain and helping children retrieve their lost toys, and look where I am now!

…that is, soaked and sleepy with Entry of the Gladiators still blaring at me from my bedside table. Still not fully awake, I stumble to the bathroom to brush my teeth and shine my nose. Along the way, I trip over a unicycle, a box of juggling balls, a crate of juggling clubs, a box of unicycles, and another unicycle. 

A typical Clown College dorm room! No such thing as too many juggling supplies :)

This was before the other shipments arrived, so now I have around triple this amount now >:)

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My daily three-hour clown makeup routine only takes 2 hours and 57 minutes this time, so I have plenty of time to get to class. I grab a third of the tricycle that currently sits in my room (aka a unicycle) and unicycle my way to class. 

A common question that us Clown College admissions bloggers get is “how far is the commute?” My answer to that is…it depends. 

Currently, Clown College is set up in Bald Head, Maine, a small village in Southern Maine 02 shout out any Bald Head residents! your town is very cool :D . Being a small village, the distances are not very long. However, it may change next year, as we are relocating to Booger Hole, West Virginia.⁠03 also shout out any Booger Hole residents!

See, Clown College is a travelling college—like a travelling circus, but a college. Every year, we move to a different location, bringing our entire campus with us. 

A crude map of our travelling schedule for the next decade. We’re due to pass by MIT in a few months on our way to West Virginia!

It takes about 10-15 minutes to get to my classes—my unicycle is pretty fast. Another question I get from people about daily life at Clown College is how I store my unicycle. Many generic universities, like MIT, don’t allow personal wheels in classrooms. Fortunately, my unicycle is only a personal wheel. 

I usually either lock my unicycle outside the building, or, if I’m too lazy, I just stuff it into my backpack and go on my merry way. 

At generic universities like MIT, you might get puzzled looks when walking around with a unicycle in your backpack. Or get side eyes when you accidentally lean too far to the left and you fall over because the unicycle severely destabilizes your center of gravity. But not at Clown College, where your clownish spirit can run free without judgement!

My schedule today is sort of packed. 

My first class is Juggling Lab from 9:30am to 12pm. I’m taking Juggling 701 (the Mathematics of Juggling) right now, which includes a mandatory lab. It’s really fun! We’ve been learning things about theoretical juggling during lectures, playing around with juggling diagrams and proving some results from our textbook, The Mathematics of Juggling by Burkard Polster.⁠04 Highly highly recommend, if you’re interested in such things! This isn’t even a joke—if you ask me tomorrow, I’ll say the same thing  

Screenshots from the lecture recording!

Notes from lecture!

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We’ve learned a lot about the theory of juggling, including constructing a lot of theoretical patterns. But of course, juggling doesn’t exist just to be theoretical—that’s why lab sessions exist. 

Today, we were tasked with experimentally recreating the following four patterns that we derived in class. 

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Lab sessions are by far the hardest part of the class…I fear my arms are simply not elastic enough. But I’ve been genuinely enjoying it a lot, so I’m likely going to declare one of my majors as juggling—likely the Physics of Juggling (the other major will probably be Mathematical Mischief). 

I got out of lab 45 minutes early (turns out, with the proper stretching and technique that they taught us in the practical portion of the lab training, the patterns are not too hard), so I had a bit of time to warm up my voice for my Ventriloquy lesson. I’m a part of Clown College’s Puppet Choir, which performs classical songs in muppet voices.

Clown College’s Puppet Choir—those people on stage are actually life sized puppets; we’re actually below the stage controlling them. [image credit: MIT Concert Choir]

The moment my Ventriloquy lesson ended, I had to run from the Puppetry Building to the Memememememme Center for Mimery for my PE class, which is Beginning Mimery this term. I’m technically on the waitlist for the class, but I still didn’t want to be late because it’s possible that spots will open up due to people not showing up. 

In my haste to get to my class, I ran straight into the wall. In my defense, the walls are hard to see because they’re actually invisible. My first semester, I would always get lost in the “building” because I always forgot where the doors were. I don’t know how those mime majors manage it—those damned mimes with their invisible boxes. 

Clown College requires four physical education classes in order to graduate, and I had taken none so far, so I really wanted to get off the waitlist. It turns out two people dropped, so I did! 

We began the class by watching some Olympic mimery matches, then learned some basic mimery techniques like banging on the walls of an invisible box and how to mime juggling without passing kids yelling “SIX SEVEN!” at you. 

hlep i need to sleep can you post this ellie pls i will write second part later i swear i pinky promise