Last night i went to the kickoff party for the San Francisco branch of the Choate Rosemary Hall Alumni Club. I attended Choate, and happily still keep in touch with many of my friends from there. One of my former roommates even came out for the first Symbiosis Gathering in 2005. She just gave birth to a beautiful son last summer. I also had dinner with an ex-boyfriend recently in Seattle, who can be credited with teaching me much of what I first learned about computers. He works for Microsoft now. So, based on these and other positive experiences, I was excited to meet up with some of my other former classmates and see what they’re doing these days.
Unfortunately, nobody I know (or knew) was in attendance.
I did have some fascinating chats with the staff and faculty present, which were the only interactions that saved me from an evening as a complete wallflower. Give thanks for obligatory courtesies. This is how I found out that the founders of American Apparel (Dov Charney) and Flickr (Caterina Fake) are amongst our notable west coast alumni. As I was inadvertently quoted on Twitter, thinking about this just makes me want to do something worthy of my own Wikipedia page. (Still working on that.)
As a gesture of thanks for their genuine candidness and hospitality, and also as a self-serving desire to have a bit more fun at the next one of these, I offered my services to help with coordination and publicity of events in the future. Given this is an area of my professional expertise, and that I’m friends with a couple hundred alumni on Facebook, I think I’ll really be able to help.
Ironically, this is just like my days back at Choate. I was consistently overextended in my extracurricular activities. It’s actually where I got my start organizing parties (thanks, Class Committee) and making flyers.
Perhaps this will be an ironic opportunity to bring my entire career full circle…
Just for fun - This is me at Choate. 3rd form year.
