There always seems to be just a little more to do than I think, or else
there isn’t much to do but I feel like taking full advantage of my free
time and just relaxing. Lately, work at my magazine has been keeping my
busy during the week, and a series of events, from a reunion at Vassar
that I had to help out with, to a rare chance to have dinner with a friend
of mine from Oxford whom I hadn’t seen for almost a year, to the Fourth of
July, has kept me away from my computer for any extended time.
Not long ago, we had Reunion Weekend at Vassar. Roughly 2,000 alumni,
ranging from 27 to 97 years of age, Came back to the campus to meet up
with old friends and reminisce about their time as undergraduates.
These kinds of events are of great importance to American colleges.
They get very little funding from the American government, so their
budget is largely determined by how much money graduates give back
to their school. Reunion weekends and other such events are ways for
Vassar and other colleges to show their graduates that they are
putting Alumni donations to good use. The college makes a special
effort to keep the alumni happy and to keep the campus looking tidy
so those donations will keep coming.
Part of the effort, of course, is making sure that all of the alumni’s
needs are taken care of, so me and virtually every other person on campus
that weekend who was not there for a reunion was enlisted to help make
sure things ran smoothly. Overall, I had a much better time at the
reunion than I thought I would. It was inspiring to see that so many
people from my school had gone on to be successful in so many different
ways.
Chinese college students might be interested to know that American
colleges invest much of their alumni donations in the construction of new
facilities. So even with new funds coming in to colleges all the time,
tuition stays around $40,000 a year for the top private colleges. That’s
about CNY 319,680 according to www.xe.com. I wonder how much Chinese
students pay a year for college, and what happens if a talented student
cannot afford college. In America a financially strapped student takes
out loans for college that he has to pay back later, but in my experience
most other countries do it differently (and better!).
Lastly, it’s incumbent upon me as a blogger from the US to China to
mention that last weekend was the Fourth of July, when Americans
celebrate Independence Day. The Declaration of Independence was signed on
July fourth 1776, but maybe you knew that already. (It always amazes me
how much people from other countries know about American History, while
most Americans tend to know next to nothing about even their own history
let alone that of China or England.)
Americans celebrate the holiday in true American fashion: we barbecue
hotdogs, hamburgers, and steak, and we watch fireworks. We didn’t invent
any of these things—I believe it was actually the Chinese who invented
fireworks (correct me if I’m wrong)—but we have used them for our own
purpose with great effect.
I was actually in Washington D.C. on the Fourth, visiting my girlfriend.
Appropriately enough for our current administration, the fireworks show
on the National Mall was something of a bust. It was a cloudy day in
Washington. For those who went early and staked out a spot directly under
the pyrotechnics, it was no doubt spectacular. But the rest of the city
had stayed home, hoping to avoid the crowds and watch the show from a
nearby private rooftop. Most of these erstwhile firework appreciators had
their views obscured by clouds. All that was left of the show was bright
flashes behind the clouds, like colored lightning in a rainless storm.