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Thursday, June 13, 2002 Shrink-wrapped Perhaps they wanted to appease the parents by providing a reception in the President's garden with fancy finger foods served by elegantly groomed maitre d's. I did not find it impressive. This afternoon affair catered to graduating students and their families was a soupy occasion, speckled with furtive glances in a jazz-filled haughty air. Most people looked out of place: the intellectual elite stuffed into a scene meant for high class society snobs. My sister and I scrunched ourselves into the shadowed edge of the kiddie pool which rimmed the floral background. We snacked on expensive crackers while I made snide remarks about the pretentiousness of it all: the too-tight ties, the strappy heels, the hairspray-petrified hair, the insinuating questions. This education that I've scrapped up--has it come to this? But this snootiness eventually affected people around me. In the evening, when the banquet was served at the Athenaeum, we were seated at a table with two other families politely bickering about the stock market and international politics. Servers filled crystal glasses with merlot and chardonnay and offered delicate salads that looked like chewed up dandelion leaves. Where am I? What sort of purgatory is this? I said something stupid and my sister laughed. For a brief moment, the pendulous atmosphere broke. This self-congratulatory rhetoric made my palms sweaty and my shoulders itchy. I almost imploded into jelly-filled gibberish when a trumpet player began strolling through the room with waiters trailing behind, each carrying a cake embroidered with the Caltech insignia. One cake per senior. And as I blew the candle out with the cameras flashing, I thought I'm a deviant, instead of wishing for world peace, the end of hunger, or even selfish materialism. The speeches began and I started checking my watch. In the middle of the dean's litany of statistics and random ranting (29% women...3 aeronautics majors...leftover peanuts in the aisle of the airplane), I skittered outside, past the busboys and the serving trays, to hurry to the concert. In the uncluttered night air with a sheaf of music in my hands, I was free. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:27 PM : ]
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