Less than a year away!

Last weekend, Kirse, Amy, and I attended the 15-year reunion for the Class of 1993.

Kirse traveled more than 6,000 miles round-trip, found round-the-clock child care for the three children she left behind, and helped Amy take care of her baby here, when it turned out Amy had to travel without her husband. She also took the time to visit every single class headquarters and attend a constant stream of events, while also investigating almost every venue on campus as a potential site for our headquarters, dinners, or other gatherings.

Amy traveled from several hours away by car with her 9-month-old, Sam, who was an absolute sweetheart about his first trip away from his dad--and his home.

The whole thing was exhausting for all of us and I'm tremendously grateful to Kirse and Amy for the sacrifices they are making in service to our class. I knew they would do a terrific job, but in true Smithie style, they are overachieving already.

Kirse will be sending me a blog to post sometime in the next week or so--her first one!--and hopefully I'll have some photos to post as well. We were so busy, we hardly took any photos, but Elizabeth Solaka '93 snapped quite a few and will share them with us soon.

Highlights of reunion for me were getting to spend time in my old house, Cushing (there's some new, hideous wallpaper downstairs, and the dining room is much-improved--they have fountain soda!); Illumination Night; seeing friends; eating in Smith houses; exploring campus; and sipping champagne late at night with my best friends from the Class of '93.

If you have friends from other classes, they are welcome to come to reunion, by the way. They would march with the 1776 group in the alumnae parade (if they wanted) and can attend events, such as the all-reunion dinner on Thursday night.

If you or your friends are thinking of coming to reunion and don't want to register and/or stay on campus, it's important to make other arrangements at least six months in advance. The Hotel Northampton and other venues fill up very quickly for that weekend.

As always, if you have photos to share of your life now or reunions past, or from our undergrad years, please post them at our Flickr page (link to the right) or send to me to post at our blog.

Please also spread the word about our blog and make sure your contact information is up-to-date at the alumnae house.

Hope you all are well!

Are There Too Many Women in IT?

A contributor to another site run by my parent company, Jupitermedia, wrote this opinion piece about women in IT fields. I'd love it if any of you who disagree with his position--or could offer him some insight about your experience in IT--would drop him a line.

The column is at: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/11067_3746501_1.

To reach him, click on his byline.

Young Smithie profiled on NPR

This is the story my friend Amy was helping with when she recorded commencement last weekend.

WFCR, NPR News & Music for Western New England, May 23, 2008
Remarkable graduates: Allison Bellew
Thousands of students graduate from the region's colleges this spring; many of them have accomplished more than you might expect. Today WFCR begins a series on some of these remarkable graduates with the story of Smith graduate Allison Bellew '08, who spent most of her childhood between foster homes.

Scary Numbers

The Smith College Board of Trustees has approved a comprehensive fee of $48,108 for the 2008-2009 school year, reflecting an overall increase of 5.5 percent over the 2007-08 comprehensive fee. That fee includes tuition ($35,810), room and board ($12,050) and a student activities fee ($248).

Even so, the college received 3,771 first-year applications, a 13 percent increase over last year's numbers.

Source: NewsSmith

Planning Update

I traveled to Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA earlier this month and spent a week with Kirse.

In addition to a grueling hike, we also got to do some reunion planning. Thanks to everyone who completed the online survey!

Tonight, Kirse is traveling via a red-eye flight to Bradley airport. AmyO, Reunion Co-Chair, will pick her up tomorrow morning and then the three of us will spend the next few days observing the 15-year reunion of the Class of 1993.

We are still looking for volunteers to fill a variety of positions. If you're interested in helping--even in some small way like manning our headquarters for a couple of hours--please let us know!

The list of classmates who are planning to attend reunion is growing. Click the link to the right to see the list. To add your name, drop me or Kirse an e-mail at smithreunion1994@gmail.com.

The Diploma Circle

My friend Amy (Wellesley, '94) attended commencement on Sunday. It was her first Smith commencement and she was there in her capacity as a reporter. Newsweek is profiling one member of the Smith class of 2008 because she and her sister spent their middle school and high school years in foster care, but this year, are both graduating from college. Amy was there recording the event for the story.

Yesterday, she and I got to talking about our shared experience as Smith/Wellesley alumnae, about the "Smith experience," and how we get all goosebumpy and tingly when we see the older classes parade in on Ivy Day or witness special traditions, such as the diploma circle.

We also talked about the frequently felt feeling of failure that comes with believing we have never quite lived up to the expectation of greatness that comes with a Smith or Wellesley degree. One struggles to feel that one isn't a total loser if one hasn't cured cancer, or published a best seller, or made a lot of money. Now a Wellesley alumna is running for President for crying out loud! Talk about raising the bar. :-)

After the talk, I sent Amy the link to the letter I sent to our class on the 13th anniversary of our commencement, addressing some of these feelings. I'm sharing her response with you all because I love so much her articulation of the meaning of the diploma circle.

Here's what she said after reading my letter:

>>This piece is brilliant and beautiful. And, I love the diploma circle’s role in it. It was something I first heard about on Saturday night and knew I wanted to record. While I was there with my mic in everyone’s way, new graduates grumbled about the chaos. Someone said, ‘why can’t they just organize this’ while others complained the circle wasn’t being widened enough or that people with diplomas in hand weren’t leaving. There was much consternation and little celebration, though moments after receiving someone else’s diploma during the ceremony, the student I was recording actually said, “I love that we get someone else’s diploma.”

I was wondering about the value and meaning of the circle, beyond tying legions of Smith alumnae to each other in one final act of tradition. I came up with this: in the chaos that is graduation weekend, there is little stopping—stopping the noise, the energy, the flow of all things. In that circle, the actual act of graduating is prolonged, for some more than for others, and no one has the power to change the time it takes to find her diploma. There’s something lovely in that. And, of course, it’s yet another part of The Smith Experience that is impossible to translate."

We won't be reuning on commencement weekend this time, so we can't witness the Diploma Circle this time around, but I think that the return to campus and the tradition of reunion is another very special part of the Smith Experience, another link in the chain that connects us. I hope you'll join us.

Smith Alumna is Superdelegate

While I'm supporting the other Democractic candidate and therefore disappointed in this news, I still thought it was exciting to read that a Smithie is a superdelegate: Lauren Wolfe '05, who is now a student at Detroit Mercy Law School, will be casting her superdelegate vote for Barack Obama.

I should probably mention that Kirse is drinking the Obama Kool-Aid, so she'll be happy.

Details below.

THE CAPITAL TIMES, WI, May 14, 2008
Obama snags another Wisconsin superdelegate
On the basis of a poll posted on YouTube.com that asked young people to tell them to commit either to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, Smith alumna Lauren Wolfe, College Democrats of America (CDA) president and Awais Khaleel, CDA vice president -- say in their capacity as superdelegates they will vote for Obama at this summer's Democratic National Convention.