Grads

Grads

A final reminder for MALS alumni: The MALS Alumni Association’s annual luncheon is scheduled for Thursday, July 13, at noon in the Hanover Inn. There has been some discussion on how we can be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the program this year when some MALS students started in the program before then. According to the Dartmouth School of Graduate Arts and Sciences, the current format for the program was finalized in 1977, after several years of evolution. Larry Olmsted (MALS’06) is our guest speaker, and we expect an interesting and entertaining afternoon. Please contact the MALS office at (603) 646-3592 or email amy.l.gallagher@ dartmouth.edu. A reservation is essential. We have had an offer from Gary Moore (MALS’78) to organize a hike to round out the afternoon. Please

let me know if this is something that interests you. Gary has promised it would not be too exerting.

As I write this, Jennifer Currier (MALS’12) is on a 23-day journey around the world. She is traveling from San Francisco to New York City, the long way around. Jenny lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she works as a research assistant at Brown University and also writes for Motif Magazine, an arts and entertainment publication. Her concentration in the MALS program was creative writing. Jenny loves entering contests where the prize is a free trip. This trip is not just a vacation; it is a contest that involves a scavenger hunt and a final aim of raising money for charity. She entered the contest thinking that it was probably a drawing for the free trip. Her first step was an interview, which she passed while learning that she had overlooked a few details. She needed to put up $12,500 for trip expenses and find a partner who could do the same for her team. Much to her surprise, her father helped her with the expenses, but finding the partner proved to be more difficult. At the last minute, with the help of friends, she connected with a former Providence resident whom she had never met, but met her rigid standards. He said he didn’t snore. Her teammate, Mark Seefelt, is a meteorology researcher at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Providence had just had a thundersnow, and this is one of Mark’s favorite weather phenomena, so they are using it as a team name.

Finally, we come to the free trip part of the contest. Thundersnow is part of the Global Scavenger Hunt. There are 11 teams visiting 10 countries on four continents. The purpose ofthe scavenger hunt is to get the players interacting with the local people, talking with strangers and getting a glimpse of the local cultures. Each team also raises money for causes important to them. Thundersnow is raising money for orphans and education, clean water and refugees and displaced people. The team raising the most money wins the title of “World’s Greatest Travelers” and is given a free trip in 2018 as defenders ofthe title.

I did have a few questions for Jenny but learned from an article on her in the Providence Journal that she is allowed contact with the outside world only in calls home and her blog. —Jane Welsh, 175 Greensboro Road, Hanover, NH 03755; (603) 643-3789; m.jane.welsh.gr@ dartmouth.edu