Prompted by a Social Networking Site
In a LinkedIn discussion among the University of Michigan Alumni group, one of the members asked what people remembered and missed about Michigan.
Here was my response:
I miss Osterweil Co-op, "Harold and Maude" at midnights, the sauna at the NCRB after badminton, the fall colors from the tree-lined pathway that led from the "Burlodge" (Bursley) down to the busstop at the start of North Campus, Vernor's soda (aka pop), Drake's, the great theater troupe that played at East Quad from 1983-87, the reading room at the Grad Library, Ulrich's Bookstore, the Rubiyat, the Nectarine Ballroom, my freshman roommate, Jennifer Weir; I wish I could recall her married name to get in touch with her.
Twenty-five years ago, I was in my first semester at Michigan. Hard to believe! The majority of the things I missed, I realized, re-reading my list, were from experiences I had my first year. Only Osterweil, the Rubiyat and the Nectarine Ballroom were from sophomore and senior year; I lived and studied in Jerusalem at Hebrew University for my junior year.
I'll never forget what a colleague said to me about her time at Michigan; we met when I worked in the Software Group and she had just joined IBM through Lotus:
She said that all of the women she knew who lived in East Quad during college who were heterosexual became lesbians there, and all of the lesbians there became heterosexual. It was in response to my having said that I opted not to live in East Quad, as I thought I could avoid my lesbianism if I did so -- it was known as the "radical" dorm on campus.
My colleague also said, "I'd have been so happy there [at Michigan] if I had been happy then." I related to that assessment.
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