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Fortieth College Reunion, In Absentia

My fortieth college reunion is this coming weekend; I am not attending.

I've struggled with mixed feelings about that huge part of my formative years spent at Yale. I went there as an undergraduate and stayed to get my doctorate in mathematics. The graduate schooling was more monomaniacal and easier for me to assimilate, but I turned 17 my first month as an undergraduate and the experiences were much harder to process.

I grew up middle-class; my time at Yale was the first time that I felt poor. I knew that I wasn't, intellectually, that I never went hungry involuntarily. Still, I was surrounded by a student culture that treated the large disposable income that I lacked as the norm.  After my first year I found a circle of friends who were like me, and from there I felt the presence of a support net socially.

This was the first time where I was challenged intellectually as the rule and not the exception. I had taken math classes at a local college while finishing high school, and they were some of the best I ever took. I had some inspiring classes in high school but they were not the standard in the way they were at Yale. A large part of who I am as an intellectual being still goes back to those four years I spent as an undergraduate.

Hard times lead to strong relationships; I have kept up with good friends from that time. My interest in returning for a reunion to spend time with other classmates who looked down on me, not so much. The faculty who inspired me, my dissertation advisor, the librarian who supervised my nine years of work study, they are long gone. Some of the old buildings (and truly gorgeous architecture, I mean, really gorgeous architecture) are there; new buildings have arisen. For me the place was always the people and the ones who made me who I am now are no longer there.

40 years; I've had a full life since then, married, had children, built a career.

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