Back Talk

What do the Adirondacks, a poem by Yeats, and six members of the Grinnell College men’s and women’s swim team of the late 1970s, have in common?

How one alum discovered too much was just right.

My summer research with Edith Renfrow Smith ’37, by Feven A. Getachew ’24

About 10 years ago, George Drake ’56 said tutorial topics should be fun, a comment that stuck and caused me to choose psychology of humor for the topic of my seventh tutorial in 2015.

The trunk had sat locked in various basements for well over 25 years.

Sally Campbell Galman ’96, a professor of child and family studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has earned significant acclaim for her arts-based social science research.

It came as a surprise when [my older daughter] Hana, who lives and works in Boston, suggested we attend my 40th reunion together.

My 7-year-old and her friend were playing fairies. Her friend said, “If I could have any wish, I would wish that magic were real.” Annabel responded, “Really? Not to stop global warming?”

Roughly translated, this phrase means, “what’s the point?” This is what Cliff said to me on the first day of French class in the Newton Correctional Facility.

Unlike other boys, I never wanted to be a bus driver when I grew up; if I had, Grinnell would have given me the opportunity to fulfill my childhood ambition. But such was not to be.

We have all experienced meeting Grinnellians in unexpected places. Our group of four Grinnell friends took this to an international level during a trip to Tuscany to celebrate our collective bicentennial. We were visiting Lucca, Italy, in 2018 and taking a cooking class. While learning from Chef Giuseppe how to roll the perfect gnocchi, we chatted with our classmates — when lo and behold, we discovered a fifth Grinnellian in our midst.

Last spring, I participated for the first time in the Everyday Class Notes (ECN) care package project and found it was a wonderful way to connect with current students, in more ways than one.