1989

Mentions of our approaching 10th are becoming more fre-quent, making me realize that my five-year term writing this column is close to expiring. Until recently the topics of my columns can largely be characterized as change and movement, formation and pursuit of dreams and life goals, and life-changing events. Focus, drive, and accomplishment dominated people's notes to me during the last five years to a greater degree than in our first five years out, when uncertainty, wandering, and testing were the common themes. I have written about graduate education and marriages and first children, first big promotions and key career moves, and works published and companies started. That may be an issue of self-selectivity—easy to pop a school/company/spouse name in the mail. From first-hand experience, I will say that though uncertainty, wandering, and testing have still been very active over the last few years, writing about those themes to our peers requires delicate spin.

But this strange calm has appeared. Fewer notes appear from the Public Affairs Office (formerly the College news service). Despite the electronic medium that ties many of us to our social worlds, I get few notes. Even the gossip has halted. I do not take it personally. Some of the silence I attribute to a genuine lack of the newsworthy. With basic vital statistics taken care of for now, what is there to write about? I also attribute some of it to self-selectivity. Why write if you are not quite sure if what you are doing/where you are is a vital statistic or an accomplishment both worthy and pithy?

Chances are I will pass on my share of the column after our reunion. So, I take one of my last opportunities to combat the aforementioned reasons for not sharing our expe- riences with our peers and revisit that riveting graduation address by Brodsky. You know, the one about us being all newfangled and not yet prepared to face the greatest challenge of all—boredom and routine. Well, I think that is finally settling in for us as a community—as it is supposed to in this phase of life. That is what makes this phase so interesting and so replete with very meaningful experiences and events. There are some things of course you may never wish to share with your peers, but in a life phase without obvious transitional events, there is much to share with old friends and classmates that may be on a par with those events of our 20s .

So write in about the birth of your second and third child and experiences balancing work and family, about the new product you designed that made a machine run faster, about the triathalon that you are training for, your opinions about events of the day, that ball you caught during the playoffs, the local election you lost, the volunteer group you have been working with for three years, the community theater you paint sets for.. .you get my point. And for those who still feel they are wandering about adrift and all that, well...there's always law school (only kidding)—write in about just that. Your churning dreams or similarly renegade thoughts are likely shared by many others who spent four years in the New Hampshire woods.

So, the lesson here is? If you don't want me to get all goopy and introspective, send me something to work with!

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