back to school

Going away to college is often touted as one of the defining times in a young person’s life, a period in which they are no longer under the supervision of their parents and placed in an environment that can’t help but change them.  As cliche as this vision of academia seems, that’s exactly the situation of freshman Joyce Brown, one of the leading players in David Willis’s slice-of-life dramedy Dumbing of Age, which is set entirely on the campus of Indiana University.

Joyce (like Willis himself) has been raised in a loving but sheltered and strict fundamentalist Christian home and is attending school to, in her own words “hunt down the wonderful, godly man [she] will someday marry.” But Joyce’s worldviews will be tested and turned upside down by a widely diverse and intricate cast of characters. These include Joyce’s misanthropic roommate, her Yale-bound new best friend who happens to be an atheist, her rebellious convicted felon neighbor, their despot of an RA, and an emotionally unstable girl masquerading as a caped crusader (or is it the other way around?)–and those are just the people on her floor!

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