Life After Connecticut College

So during the day down here it's started to get as low as the mid 50's. Everyone keeps talking about how cold it is, but it's nothing compared to the winters walking across the fields at Conn with the wind blowing in from water on two sides of the campus. One of my students (I shouldn't say favorite student because teachers shouldn't have favorites) well anyway one my students with cerebral palsy is determined to learn how to write even though his limbs are determined to not obey his commands. He has the will and the determination so I've decided that we're going to spend some time each day practicing writing skills. Today we were working on making capital A's and for a moment he was able to actually do the up down and across motion that this letter requires with minimal assistance form me, and he was so excited. I have never seen so much excitement. So that was in fact the highlight of my day.

Today we also lost the vice principal of my school. Depending on whom you ask she either quit or was transferred by the school district. Either way it is bad news for our school since she was the main (and very effective) disciplinarian of my school. I feel like there isn't much to talk about except my school but being a teacher has a tendency to take over one's life. I did get to go on a cemetery tour over the thanksgiving break and it was entertaining and informative. Quick fact: Easy Rider the movie was shot in the cemetery that I visited. Apparently the Catholic Church had no idea what was actually being shot when the agreed to the filming, once the movie came out they were very angry about the drug use and sex that was portrayed in the film and no other filming is allowed in any catholic cemeteries in New Orleans ever again. If you see a scene in a New Orleans cemetery in another movie it's a Protestant cemetery.

Posted by Tahereh Coq at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whew, what a Thanksgiving weekend! I spent my four days off with my roommate and fellow Conn staff member Mitch "Put My Thang Down Mitch It and Reverse It" Herz. Since his family lives in Nebraska (apparently they are indeed human, though I was previously unaware that there were any non-corn species living anywhere in the state), it would be a major expenditure of time and money for him to travel home. So, he came to my parents house with me! Our journey began on Wednesday afternoon...

We met at our spacious (go with it) downtown New London apartment at around 3:00, changed from our business casual clothes into our casual clothes (I basically just changed my shoes), and loaded up my 2000 Toyota Camry (sweet ride). Once packed, we hit the road, cruising up majestic Route 395 at a brisk 72 mph. Our destination: Allston, MA (a.k.a. Hipster City, USA) for a Welcome to Florida concert at Harper's Ferry. In typical Boston fashion, we bumped into a Conn alum within 15 minutes of our arrival: Cornelius Hardenbergh '07 (shout-out). The show went great, but unfortunately Mitch and I had to get back on the road immediately afterwards and thus were unable to attend the afterparty (which may or may not have existed). An hour or so later, after trekking heroically through dense fog, we came to my hometown, beautiful Nashua, NH. For those of you who don't know, Nashua was twice voted by Money magazine as the #1 place to live in America; too bad I don't live there anymore. As usual, my parents prepared a delectable Thanksgiving meal; my dad cooks the turkey , and my mom does everything else (the gender politics in my parents' kitchen can be quite constricting). In addition to Mitch, the Reilly family was joined by one of my dad's Czech coworkers who was in America for a business trip and thus had no plans for the holiday. His name is Roddick, and he's about 6'7". Since I'm 6', Mitch 6'1", and my dad 6'4", I was hoping that one of the other families in the neighborhood would spontaneously stop by and challenge us to a pickup game of street hoops, but alas that didn't materialize. After dinner, Mitch, my brother, and I went to see that new Stephen King movie The Mist, which was easily the most depressing thing I've ever seen (second most depressing thing: Nate with a beard). The next day, I gave Mitch the Chris Reilly Childhood Driving Tour, after which we headed out to Portsmouth for another WTF show, which went swimmingly. Mitch was so impressed by the shows that he later told one of our fellow young Conn staff members that he now wants to be a rock star. On Saturday we returned to the Whaling City to decompress from a wild few days (or should I say "daze"? WOOOO! PARTY! Ugh, never mind).

Posted by Chris Reilly at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My dinner party went pretty well Chris, thanks. I was concerned that no one would show considering I invited about 20 people and most said they couldn't come. BUT, I had a good group of 8 people that didn't know each other and there were almost no awkward moments the entire evening! I'll credit that to my personal charm. We had some cheese and crackers and fruit, but the entree was pretty awesome. You saute chicken in the olive oil that sun dried tomatoes are packed in. After it's cooked through cut it into pieces and set it aside. Boil a pound of penne pasta. In the same sun dried tomato olive oil saute some minced garlic. Then add the garlic, chicken, some low sodium chicken broth, fresh basil, and sun dried tomatoes to the pasta. Cook that together until it's warm and then put onto a plate. Grate fresh Parmesan cheese on and add roasted pine nuts, salt, and pepper. Yes, the people that didn't show missed an awesome meal. If want the exact recipe just ask!
The next day I had a club swim meet at princeton. The club team is certainly no conn college camels swim team, which is quickly moving up the nescac rankings, but it's fun nonetheless. I had never been to princeton and man is it gorgeous. The host team was also kind enough to provide people who placed in events with full size candy bars! How come we never got candy in college for winning? Maybe some extra incentive would be worthwhile, you do get pretty hungry at swim meets....Anyway, our next club meet is at Penn State. There are some pretty exciting things going on this week at Penn so I'll be back with more. My thanksgiving back in the land of cheese and beer was pretty awesome and I hope everyone else had an enjoyable holiday too!

Posted by Sam Garner at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I started working at an organic vegan raw restaurant's juicebar which has seriously delicious food and is quite expensive. Our smoothies range from 7.50 to 20 bucks, which is why every time someone messes up or drops any kind of food on the ground, all the employees gather round like ants :) can't let it go to waste!
Also I'm sure you all know, but the greatness of being turkish comes with a slight vertical challange. I am the shortest juice person at the bar and most of the cups and containers we use are on high shelves. The first week I was working, I struggled a lot so they got me a litte stand. We later taped 'little turks magic height booster' on it and one of the guys I work with drew a picture of me with a tight shirt that had a 'T' on it for 'turk'. So now everyone knows who's magic height booster they keep tripping over.
If you're into good vegan food stop by pure food and wine on irving pl between 17th and 18th or better yet stop by the juice bar on 17th between irving pl and 3rd ave

Posted by Deniz Dinler at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After close to six months of working at Christie’s, I have successfully survived my first high season after the two-week bonanza that is the Impressionist & Modern art and Post-War/Contemporary art sales. The past several weeks have been a whirlwind of late nights at work followed by parties and the eventual needing to wake up and return to work in the morning to start the process all over again. Multitudes of records were broken in a span of two weeks with the combined results of both sales at $937,463,050, an industry record for the two series of sales and rebutting any rumors that the art market is crashing. These sales were also in the midst of my birthday, which was celebrated grandly after the Post-War sale. The ending of the sales couldn’t get any better than with the appearance of Welcome to Florida, the 2nd most superior band in the world next to Toto, on November 17th at the Knitting Factory in downtown. I’m looking forward to a long weekend off for Thanksgiving, in which I will see my family and attending not only a Bruins game but the Eagles vs Patriots game… in which we all know the Eagles will dominate! Hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving and Fly Eagles Fly!

Posted by Nate Borgelt at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Howdy gang,

Let me say welcome to all of you who are visiting for the first time! Today, the College Relations department (housed in the same building as the Chris Reilly department) sent out the latest e-newsletter, which contains a story about this very blog. We're also planning on including a mention in the CC magazine, the Conntact, the website, and the Voice. Additionally, tomorrow night I'm getting "lifeafter.conncoll.edu" tattooed on my stomach in the same font that Tupac had "Thug Life" tattooed on his stomach; I might also get Tupac's six pack inked on me while I'm there.

I encourage all visitors to comment on the posts that people have written. Just click on "Comments" at the bottom of whichever post you want to respond to. The more you comment, the more our bloggers will want to post!

Posted by Chris Reilly at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So...lets see...first of all I want to thank Chris Reilly for choosing the 6 of us to publicly display our lives after Conn. I've never been a "blogger", I don't even use myspace..I guess I'm pretty loyal to facebook which I noticed most '07 alumns have been. The greatest thing about facebook...aside from the new scrabble application...is the message "thread". My riverridge roommate Laura Brown (who now lives in Barcelona) started a thread about a week ago and since then my other 3 riverridge roommates and I have been sort of 'reunited' through facebook which seems ridiculous since we're close friends but it has been very easy to get out of touch with even my closest friends during this first year of our "real lives". I'm sure many of you can relate.
Alright I guess I'm supposed to update you all on my life...
Boston is a really tough city to live in. ESPECIALLY when you don't know very many people. It's a transitional city where most people only stay for a few years either during college or right after college. You'd think that with all these college-age people wandering around it would be easy to meet people but you're WRONG. And maybe you're just thinking that "you're just being antisocial and it doesn't help that you work one job with 60 year olds and another job with a 5 month old" but I do have a couple good friends who have lived here for 4 years or more who feel the same way as I do. Alright I'm done ragging on Boston for now. I mean a lot of things are good like I have a great house, great roommates, the red sox won...
Ok so...exciting things in my life...
I just booked a flight to Washington DC! I've never been there so that's exciting. Me, H. Duncan Rollason and Jesse Taylor-Waldman are visiting Alex Tenenbaum and Eric Cloutier who live there together. So I'll let you know how that goes on my next entry.
Flying to California for christmas and hopefully seeing Ms. Trent Hardman before she moves to Brazil.

I guess what's important to know is that I'm making every effort to get together with people at Conn who truly had an impact on my life and to stay connected. Maybe the Chris Reilly mentality is rubbing off on me but I think that Conn gave us all something really special and we should never forget that. Alright I'm done being sappy and I really have to get back to work!!!

Posted by Jaime Pepper at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that I have an apartment, although I share it with some apartmentmates, I can do fun things that you can't do in a dorm. For example, we have a dog. Her name is sweety, I have no idea what kind of dog she is, but it's one of those bigger kinds. Whenever you walk in the door she is so unbelievably excited to see you that she wags her entire butt while her tail whacks her face. It's not my dog so I have all the benefits of having a dog without having to take care of it!
Another cool thing about having a real live apartment is a full kitchen. With my full kitchen I have decided to start having dinner parties (don't judge me, it's a great way to save money). So I'm having one this friday 11/16 with a whole ton of bioethics students. Dorms are great because you don't have to clean up after yourself, which many conn students take full advantage of, but I can have dinner parties. Dinner parties? Don't have to clean up after yourself? Dinner parties? Don't have to clean up after yourself? I live in an apartment so I'll take what I can get. They're also a fun way to meet people and it lets people show off their cooking/drink making skills if they bring something interesting to share.
The most fantabulous part of our apartment is its view. Philly maybe carcinogenic, but it's skyline is really beautiful at night. Our apartment is on the 10th floor of a west Philly apartment building so we have an awesome view of the entire city. Maybe next time I'll talk about my classes, but that's enough for now.

Posted by Sam Garner at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hey writers and readers,

The Life After Connecticut College blog has officially launched, so it's time for the posts to begin! We'll be making an announcement in the upcoming e-newsletter that goes to all alumni, and hopefully we'll have links from the Conn website and the alumni online community up soon.

Interestingly, the blog shares a birthday with our own Nate Borgelt, who turns 23 today. Happy Birthday, Nate! Make sure you check in soon to read about what he wishes for while blowing out the candles on his cake tonight (my guess: more photos of himself on the blog).

Posted by Chris Reilly at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I began working at Conn about a week after graduation, which gave me just enough time to lie on the beach for a couple days and to attend a few graduation parties. Five months after starting, I still very much enjoy being at the College and helping accomplish its goals. As the Graduate Assistant for Advancement, I get to work with young alumni and students, travel around the country, organize and attend alumni events, and raise money for the Annual Fund. My favorite part about the job is connecting with other alumni and hearing their stories about the College and their hopes for its future. In my spare time, I still play with the orchestra on campus, and my band Welcome to Florida just released our fifth album. Check us out at welcometofloridamusic.com.

Posted by Chris Reilly at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the end of last year I got accepted to teach for America New Orleans corp. I drove down to New Orleans at the beginning of June, and headed off to Texas for a five-week Teach for America training. This training was in fact one of the hardest things I have ever done, or at least I thought until I started teaching. I'm currently working as an elementary school special education teacher. My school is Fannie C. Williams and it's located in New Orleans east, which was hit very hard by the hurricane. This year is the first year that Fannie C. is re opening, and we are currently a modular campus. This is difficult at times, especially when it rains. I have never seen puddles like the ones in New Orleans. But we make it work, and I feel very lucky because my principal is amazing. My students range in disabilities from mild to moderate learning disabilities to sever and profound disabilities, but they are all amazing, and the reason I go to work every day. New Orleans is an incredible city, like nowhere else in America. When I travel outside of the city it almost feels like when I return to the states form a different country. I highly encourage people to come and visit the city. It will be a great vacation and one of the best ways to help this city re-build.

Posted by Tahereh Coq at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After graduation, I returned to China, where I had previously studied abroad, to travel with a few fellow Conn alums. In September, I started working with the Deutsche-Bank Group, first going through extensive training in London and then relocating to New York in October, where I began my position as a Credit Risk Management Analyst.

Posted by Topher Bothur at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I moved to New York after graduation and landed a job with Christie's Auction House. In addition to my normal responsibilities in the Client Services department, I recently got to help out with the production of the upcoming Sex and the City movie, whose cast and crew spent a day filming at our Rockefeller Center office. I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and frequently hang out with other Conn alums.

Posted by Nate Borgelt at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After graduation I moved to NYC but couldn’t start working because my work visa wasn’t valid till mid July. Since I had some time off, I decided to take a NOLS course. Having applied so late, I didn’t have much to choose from, so I went for the only open course, Alaska Mountaineering. I am not a big fan of the cold, and I'm terrified of heights, but I figured since this was the only course that had an opening, it was meant to be.

I'm a clean freak -- most of my friends think I have OCD, even though I don't -- but we did not shower for a month and somehow I was okay with it. We ice climbed, dug out ice/snow caves, practiced self-arrest and crevasse rescue and traveled about 80 miles all together. We cooked amazingly delicious food and I somehow survived eating only vegan food on the glacier. Our backpacks weighed about 55-60 pounds and even though the trip as a whole seemed impossible to me at first; being out in the wilderness with over half my weight on my back, and on the freezing glacier where I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, it was actually the most refreshing and motivating experience I've ever had.

Apart from all the dangerous stuff we did, my biggest accomplishment was probably learning how to wipe my butt with snow without falling into a crevasse and learning not to be bothered by not showering and wearing the same clothes for a month. I no longer have a face book account but do have pictures up on www.denizalaska.blogspot.com If you have the time and have saved up money, whether you’re an outdoorsy person or not, you should definitely check out some of the courses they offer (www.nols.edu).

Posted by Deniz Dinler at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, this summer I decided that I would do nothing academic and just
enjoy myself. SO, for the first month of the summer I went around
looking for jobs, most of which didn't start until July because that's
how late all the schools get out. I ended up life guarding at the
outdoor pool my JCC (Jewish Community Center) just built. It was a
pretty cool place and I got awesomely tan. Yes, people can get tan in
Wisconsin, winter does not last all year long. I also decided that I'd
train with my swim club at home because it would be the last chance I
would get to swim with them for a whole summer. It's a really fun team
and we all had a great time training this summer. I'd wake up early in
the morning, milk my cows so I could make chocolate milk after practice
(a great recover drink), and then I would check the brewery in my
basement to make sure everything was turning out brewlicious! Then it
was off to swim practice at our team pond (we don't have pools in
wisconsin because the plumbing is too complicated to maintain for us
feebleminded, backward, country-folk).

Aside from all the daily hardships of country life, I published another
article in the American Journal of Bioethics. I wasn't really planning
on doing this, but the article that I responded to was something I
really felt strongly in writing about. It just came out in the most
recent issue of AJOB and it's about the role of bioethics in politics.
If anyone is interested in reading it I can send it your way!

Currently, I'm at the University of Pennsylvania doing a masters in
bioethics. They have a fantastic department with some of the foremost
bioethicists in country. All of my classes are incredibly interesting
and have an unbelieveable student body of duel degree med, law, and
dental students and many mid-career professionals that all work in
bioethics related fields (ie law, nursing, medicine, pharmaceuticals,
philosophy). As for Philly, it's a dirty place. However, it has really
grown on me and I'm quite enjoying it so far.

That's enough for now, more to come!

Posted by Sam Garner at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After graduation I spent the summer working at Connecticut College for the physics department running my independent experiment using the accelerator. In July I was connected through the Conn jazz ensemble conductor to the curator of the Harvard Observatory and in August I was hired as the curatorial assistant of the Harvard Observatory. This is only a part time position and Boston is expensive so I took on a second job as a nanny. I now work five days a week 10am-6pm, each day alternating jobs. I live in Brighton with my dog and three roommates and I often get together with ’07 alumni who live in the area.

Posted by Jaime Pepper at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)