Half the fun of alumni weekend was all the official events. This is where we got a chance to catch up with all the people we actually hadn't seen since college. A lot of the graduate students are getting close to finishing up their PhDs (and mostly didn't want to talk about it). A ton of people from our class have gotten married. It was so much fun to hear about what everyone was up to.
The first event we attended was a wine tasting. There's nothing like booze to attract people and get them talking. This happened shortly after we arrived, so it's where we started running into the people we'd be seeing all weekend. Saying hi to everyone was fun. It was also amusing to see the older alumni and guess which college they had attended. A lot of the time it was incredibly obvious. The balding dudebros checking out all the girls were from CMC. The group of little old ladies in matching skirts were from Scripps. The aging hippies with dreadlocks and no attention span were from Pitzer. It was fun, and a little strange, to see how much the stereotypes of the various colleges hold throughout life.
On Saturday we went to a Yelp-sponsored event were we could mingle with current students and talk about what we're using our degrees for. But it turned into more catching up with old friends. A lot of local people seemed to only have come up for Saturday events, so they wouldn't have to take Friday off from work.
After that wrapped up, Kevin and I wandered down to Academics which had been painted and spruced up a lot since we were students. It looked really nice, though it still seems like cheating that the current students get maps of the underground academic compound. We had to figure that out through trial and error.
In the mid afternoon we wandered over to the rugby field for the official unofficial game of beerball. But despite Kevin's best efforts to get a game going, it was mostly just people standing around drinking beer until we had to leave for the official class picture. The picture ended up being a lot of fun. It was impressive how much of our class showed up for the reunion. Nearly 100 people were around, roughly 2/3 of our graduating class.
After the picture there was another wine social followed by the class dinner. The novelty of dining hall food was okay, though I was reminded why I always avoided it on steak night. After dinner, President Klawe came to make a speech, which was fantastic. She was so drunk she was having trouble standing and ended up holding on to one of the space heaters for support. She gave the shortest speech I've ever heard her make and let us get back to our revelry.
There were a few events on Sunday that I would have liked to attend, like the five class competition and the alumni inner tube water polo game. But travel plans meant we didn't really have time to go to campus. Perhaps next time we'll be able to stay a bit longer.
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