BS: College Reunions, USA

Subject: BS: College Reunions, USA
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 May 17 - 11:42 AM

As I understand it, y'all across the pond don't have college the way the Americans do, because y'all actually educate your kids in high school and then send them straight to grad or trade school if that's where they're headed. My high school friends and fellow science "majors" (another American term which doesn't apply in our high schools) went straight to medical school, while I went to college and got a(nother) baccalaureate degree in the form of a Bachelor's. And as I grok these things y'all are close to that French system, with alphabet levels and all.

Do you think y'all who don't do college miss out? Or do boarding schools give you the same experience? I'm now going to wax on and on about my reunion, but I'd like to hear about all of yours, and I'd like the British and other non-US take, do you do A- or O-level reunions? Boarding school reunions?

I *loved* college. I got to the Boston area in 1979, the semester that the Tehran (US) embassy was taken over at the dawn of the terrorism age. I had never lived in the States, so that is where I became Americanized, too. I went on to get a great education and have a ton of fun, and meet great and wonderful people, and form lifelong friendships, almost all stemming from my freshman year dorm.

But I was still so innocent. I didn't *know* they would could kill daddies the way they did mine, in April 1983, after the end of college classes, a few weeks before my official graduation ceremony.

Graduation itself was sadder than sad. Mom was back by then, totally broken AND wearing other people's clothes, and shoes, because they'd lost her luggage, of course, and she could not shop, somehow. Luckily, I had also marched in the graduation ceremony the prior year when I still had a semester to go and had been told not to have family come, so while I will always mind not having the picture of me with Daddy looking proud, I do have memories of cap and gown and happy pride.

So my view of college is colored by the fact that I've never been able to be that carefree and happy, ever, again. I am happy, mind you, a lot, but not the way I was back then.

I went back to campus a lot at first, but since moving away have gone back mostly for the x5 reunions, and I have always celebrated with the class of 82 (I would have finished in spring 82 but took an extra semester, which makes me "technically 83 but socially 82" per the alumni office). I took the twins when they were 2, 7, 12 and 17, but this year, at 22, they balked.

So this was also the first time in decades I'd been there alone, without someone to keep face for, if that follows, and I found myself weeping at *everything* but still really enjoying being there.

And this was the first time ever that instead of just going to the campus and seeing all my friends in the area, I actually signed up for things and went to reunion parties and the symphony and everything. I had a *blast* - and still cried half the time. Oh, and I found out that someone who'd been in my psych and anthro classes was identical twins, one in each. I also didn't know then that I didn't recognize faces...

And they've added a lovely new tradition where the graduating class walked up to the top of the Hill with candles just as all the year-only parties were letting out, and we all trooped up and heard them ring the Chapel bells, and there were songs and a really nice speech about people finding inspiration and taking the light from the Hill out into the world. It was beautiful and inclusive ("whether you find your inspiration above you, beside you, or within you..."). I bawled and got covered in wax.

It was great. I might do it again next year, with the '83 folks, just to see a different crowd. Plus *none* of my usual friends from the area were there, not the Abidjan friends in Concord, the cousins in Lexington, nor the Alexandria guy in Boston proper. Maybe next year some of them will be around...

So tell me, how are your reunions, or do you have them at all?

Subject: RE: BS: College Reunions, USA
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 23 May 17 - 08:13 PM

Mrrzy, I'm glad you enjoyed your reunion even though some of your friends weren't there.