Looking Back

Please indulge me as I wax nostalgic for a moment. Andy graduated from business school exactly one year ago and all I can do is marvel at how quickly time flies. Like every experience, there were difficut periods (living off-campus our first year, the loneliness before making new friends, having a brand new baby in an unfamiliar city, getting our car towed soon after moving in, etc.) But we loved our two years in Boston and will always look back on it as an idyllic time in our lives. We feel richly blessed to have had such an amazing experience and for all our wonderful friends. Even though we are happily settled in our home in Columbus, I still yearn for the city and all is attendant chaos, vibrancy, history, gastronomic pleasures, beauty (natural and architechtural), and adventures (not to mention playgrounds) around every corner. The top shot is the business school campus and above are a few of the buildings. Everything on the HBS campus is perfectly manicured, inside and out. I loved walking around campus admiring the beautiful architechture and the gorgeous landscaping. One friend of mine joked that they never do anything halfway at HBS. When they wanted to plant new trees, they didn't just get some saplings from the nursery, they brought in huge mature trees and used cranes to hoist them in place, so the foliage would look at home with the rest of the existing trees. They even had people whose sole job was to wash the blackboards after every class. Sometimes I even felt like I was in a dream and that I should pinch myself when I'd call home and tell my family what we did that day. "Oh, we just walked over to Harvard Square and got some hot chocolate before we took a tour of Longfellow's house."
The Baker Library and The Charles River. The river ran right next to campus and we'd often walk or jog along and watch the rowers at all times of the day.

I don't know why I could never get a good picture on graduation day, but here's Andy standing with some of his friends. All the HBS grads gathered and then walked across the river together for the college-wide commencement ceremony.
With Andy's family at the Class Day ceremony the day before graduation. Too bad Andy didn't graduate this year, the commencement speaker was none other that J.K. Rowling. Last year it was Bill Gates, whom we missed because it overlapped with Andy getting his diploma. Each grad got only two tickets for the Harvard Yard ceremony, so I went with Andy's mom. You can see the flags for each of the graduate schools and undergraduate houses. Like the English university system, undergrads not only graduate from the school, but from their houses (a la Hogwarts for all you Potterphiles out there).

The ceremony was long, but very unique and full of tradition. Since the very first graduation in the mid 1600s, "The sheriff [of Middlesex County], resplendent in silk top hat, rises, moves solemnly to the front of the platform and, striking it three times with his silver-tipped staff, proclaims in a resonant voice, 'The meetingwill be in order.'" to begin the day. That is followed by a speech given entirely in Latin. My wonderful girlfriends and our last hurrah before everyone scattered to the four winds. Truly an amazing group of women. I am so thankful that Columbus has many equally wondeful people who have welcomed us with open arms.