By Katherine Duke '05
 Former Zumbyes sing at Reunion. |
Vanessa Hettinger ’04 and
Marni Grambau ’04 roomed together for two years at Amherst. Imagine
their surprise when they returned for Reunion 2008 and were assigned to
share a room again. “We’re gonna have a sleepover—stay up all night
talking,” joked Grambau, who works for the American Board of Internal
Medicine in Philadelphia. It would be like old times, she said.
Of
course, for some of us, “old times” aren’t very old. In addition to the
usual reunions for every class at five-year intervals, this spring
marked the first Young Alumni Reunion for classes that graduated one to
four years ago. This included my own class, and though I wore my
official employee-of-Amherst nametag and relaxed in my office in Converse between events, I was every bit the nostalgic returning alum.
At
Commencement rehearsal in 2007, Betsy Cannon Smith ’84, executive
director of alumni and parent programs, announced that a Young Alumni
Reunion was in the works, and by the end of that Commencement, the
Class of ’07 was already buzzing about reuniting the following year.
To
prepare for the reunion, a committee of young class officers surveyed
their classmates to find out what programs would be of most interest.
“Because a lot of us are either not yet in an established job or
looking to change jobs, the idea of networking sessions and looking at
career options seemed topical and useful,” explains Roz Foster ’05,
reunion chair for her class and a substitute teacher in California. The
committee invited members of older reunion classes to speak about their
careers in law, entertainment, the nonprofit sector and other fields.
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I,
personally, was more interested in several panels hosted by classes
from earlier decades. Two such panels gave me tips on how to get my
writing published (after my gig at this fine magazine ends), and two
others gave me insight into the past and current state of liberal arts
education in the United States. (The consensus of the professors and
alumni on that panel: Amherst kids of my generation have a thicker
course catalog, more diverse classmates, higher grades, cushier dorms
and greater opportunity and inclination to undertake big, impressive
projects than “the Amherst man” did back in their day. Everything else
is debatable.) I also dined with my fellow Young Alumni under a tent on
Valentine Quad, though I had to catch the last bus home before the
dancing really got started. This was fitting: even as a student, I was
never much of a party animal.
In all, more than 200 young alumni
took part in the reunion. None of my closest friends came back, but I
see them often enough anyway. It was a treat to reconnect with the
people with whom I share just a few quirky memories—my next-door
neighbors from senior year, for example, and the fellow ’05 who was
born on the same day as I was, but on a different continent.
Considering
that I live in Amherst and work at the college, I was surprised at how
transported I felt, back to a time when the campus belonged to us. It
was nice to feel, for a weekend, not like I was too old to be a
student, but like I was just barely old enough to be an alumna.
Cannon
Smith expects next year’s Young Alumni Reunion to feature more recently
graduated performers and artists. I’ll be here to watch.