U.S. Campus Life Five years later By Masako Yamada	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
学部時代の同窓会 雅子さんの母校ウェルズリー大学では、毎年、卒業年の末尾の数字が同じ卒業生のための同窓会が開かれます。今年の数字は「6」と「1」。雅子さんは年の卒業なので、今回参加できます。今住んでいるところが、ウェルズリー大学まで電車で分程度と近いので、旧交を温めに、顔を出してみることにしました。

I just attended my five-year college reunion at Wellesley College. Graduates of the college are invited back every five years to attend various events over an entire weekend. All alumnae with the number "6" or "1" at the end of their class year were invited this year, so some of the alumnae who showed up were over 70 years old. My class, the class of 1996, was the youngest-attending class.

The reunion provides a great opportunity for alumnae to catch up on the goings-on of fellow classmates. However, it also provides the opportunity to meet older and younger alumnae. Reunion weekend has a combination of all-alumnae social events, class social events and college-sponsored events like tours of new facilities and lectures by Wellesley professors.

I've never considered myself a particularly loyal attendee or graduate of Wellesley College, so I didn't want to attend all the reunion events. However, I did look forward to going to at least one event. I decided to go to a buffet dinner planned for members of the class of 1996.

My intent was not really to catch up with close friends, since I've managed to stay in touch with them even without the help of this kind of formal event. Meeting new people was not really my main goal, either, because those relationships tend to fade away quickly. I think my primary reason for wanting to go to the reunion was to see my classmates, dormmates and music friends — acquaintances I've often wondered about but have never bothered to contact — and to catch up with them. I think this is a common feeling among those attending reunions.

People who come from afar stay in the dormitories, but I just took a 30-minute, 3-dollar (¥363) train ride to get to Wellesley in time for dinner. The campus is very large and I felt a bit lonely walking around searching for different buildings. Many of the other people at the reunion had already been there for a day and seemed settled in and at ease with each other. I sorely wished that I had convinced one of my stubborn Wellesley friends from Boston to come with me. However, soon enough, I picked out three, four, five familiar faces in the crowd. I was particularly blessed to find an empty seat at a dinner table occupied mostly by people whom I already knew.

I had double-majored in English and physics and I spent many hours playing in chamber music groups, so not too surprisingly, most of the people I talked to were somehow affiliated with one of those fields. Many of those classmates had meandered quite a bit after graduation, taking this or that job, trying to figure out what they wanted to do. Many admitted that they didn't really know how they ended up where they are now or where they were heading in the future. I think the most confident, goal-oriented alumnae might have been too busy to attend the reunion since I didn't notice any such persons at the dinner.

I realized that I've had a stable life in comparison to most of my fellow Class of 1996ers since I entered graduate school straight out of college, and I have been in the same place ever since. Many of my classmates have changed jobs numerous times, have gotten married (even twice), or have had kids (even two or three), and to them, I probably look very sure about my life choices. But I really sympathized with those stories of wavering paths and of life-changing events since I've often thought of them . . . in my mind.

Not too surprisingly, many of the attendees lived around the Boston area. I doubt I would have attended the reunion were it not so close to my home. I was happy to see so many Boston-area classmates since I knew that I could easily make plans to see them again.

There is something a little sad about re-establishing contacts during reunion events only to have the excitement disappear — and the contacts melt away — soon after leaving campus and resuming regular life. I think I will start e-mailing my friends while the excitement is still there.

Shukan ST: June 22, 2001

(C) All rights reserved