EDUCATING ROSIE

Rose and I are screaming around the Northeast in Julyne’s hybrid Honda, hitting some highlights (and, may I say, highlives) of some of this country’s tonier educational institutions.

It’s been, yeah, fun. We’re bumping into her friends left and right who are doing the same thing. We’re capturing glimpses of today’s academic trends (it seems so much cooler than when I went to college). We’re consuming Vermont cheeses and NY pizzas and zen teas in little shops on rushing rivers under stone bridges. We had a great dinner last night in Middlebury with Mason and moms, Terry and Kathy.

But my bright spot: Visiting Smith, my alma mater, which I have very much resented for the past two decades and I honestly don’t know why. It’s amazing. But for whatever reasons, I hated it when I was there. Maybe because it was all-women and I was just over that after four years in an all-girls’ high school. Maybe because my dad made me take so much math and science, which I hated. Maybe because I was just in a bad place at that time. Who knows. But going back, I had a rush of love and affection for the place, where even Jack got to spend a year and a half as a “frequent visitor." 

Pictured above, Smith, Franklin King (my freshman dorm), Helen Hills Hills Chapel, Dawes (my other dorm where I met Sara, Malini, Vanessa, Helen, and some other truly wonderful women!), snapshots of downtown Northampton – which is off-the-charts cute these days – and Rose’s fave school so far, Hampshire (bleak campus, but cool school – gotta love the gender-identified bathroom) and U Mass (oy, big school).