Reflections on My New England Journey: College, Work, and Lasting Friendships
- alinamatas
- Jun 18
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 19
Like many retirees, I've been doing some leisure traveling. I recently attended my forty-fifth college reunion in Massachusetts, a perfect prompt for a visit to Boston and a side trip to neighboring Rhode Island. Okay, not the most exotic destinations, but a most rewarding journey nonetheless.
My last reunion was canceled because of Covid, so it had been a decade since the previous gathering. I graduated from Wellesley College, an all-girls school that is next tier to the Ivy League. Someone I know summarized it as "a very competitive school for wealthy girls."
It's not inaccurate. Many of the women at Wellesley come from wealthier backgrounds than I do. I attended on full financial aid, and as such, I was a fish out of water with respect to a lot of the student body, their experiences, their frames of reference. How much so, I really didn't know, and I never really cared. I have never lacked for anything important.
Still, I was unhappy a lot of the time at Wellesley, but not because of that.
The academics at Wellesley are demanding, requiring a substantial amount of reading, critical thinking and speed-learning: you learn a new concept, and next thing you are applying it in a new context, discoursing on it with "authority." You're surrounded by fast-learners like yourself, many with better study skills, all keen to succeed. This results in an intense focus on academics and a pressure to make the grade, leaving little time to just "be." Even Music 101, which I took for enjoyment (ha!), required an ability for sight singing and note recognition that God didn't gift me with. It has been the only C grade in my entire transcript history.
On the social front, most girls at Wellesley, wealthy and non-wealthy alike, seemed somewhat odd to me in their behavior, dress, and conversation. I came from a Hispanic Caribbean island, where even the studious, career-oriented girls dressed cutesy and feminine; they talked about fashion and trends and clubs and guys.
Wellesley girls talked about world affairs and dissed the campus' iconic Galen Stone Tower for being a phallic symbol. (I didn't even know the word phallic.) "Mixers," or co-ed parties, involved either MIT frat boys or pretentious Harvard men, two groups whose dating habits I wasn't accustomed to. The MIT boys were overly enthusiastic, while the Harvard men were too aloof.
The girl who seemed most similar to me (she was also there on financial aid) and with whom I enjoyed being friends had a nervous breakdown in her sophomore year and transferred out.
So why do I keep returning for reunion? It's not as if there's anyone there with whom I am regularly in contact.
I come back because Wellesley was a defining experience in my life. And one of the things I'm enjoying in retirement is taking stock.
My first job right out of college happened via my statistics professor at Wellesley, who connected me with an opening for a research assistant at the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare in Boston. He knew the director of that office, who became my first boss, and later my friend, to this day.
And it was a Wellesley scholarship that enabled one of the most significant experiences of my life: living and studying in Madrid for a year. Until then, my world ended at the Atlantic Ocean, which I had no chance to cross. Spain was only historic background to my Hispanic existence.
Junior year in Madrid gave me first-hand contact with a world so big and so diverse, I have never looked at it the same way again. To boot, I had the time of my life bar-hopping until all hours, Madrid's premier pass time. Wellesley also gave me easy entry to a master's program in journalism, a profession in which I made a living for 15 years.
For those reasons I return to Wellesley. I also have a certain mystical
attachment to its campus, a lush landscaped forest I traversed so many times I feel I left footprints.
I walked it in daylight, rushing to morning class, and on wet, cold, dreary afternoons that made the entire world and life itself look gray. I traversed it late at night, braving the ten minutes of silent, pitch-black darkness that separated me from my dorm. Strolling on sunny winter mornings blanketed in fresh snow, the vast white expanse in front of the Science Center resembled a Siberian steppe, with girls' brightly colored parkas visible in the distance. In fact, I may have forged more of a bond with that campus than with any of my classmates.
It wasn't exactly my choice to attend an all-girl school. But Wellesley was the only school that gave me enough financial aid to make it affordable.
And lonely as it was at times, the fact is that all-women colleges provide a space where women are encouraged and supported to a high standard of thinking and learning, without competing with men for attention or resources. No other place has given my gender that advantage. Forty-five years after graduation, I'm still getting used to the concept. However, I don't second guess myself anymore - I attend Wellesley reunions because I belong.
As in previous reunions, I caught up with my "situational Wellesley friends" - these are classmates with whom I chat in every reunion and only in reunion. This time we exchanged phone numbers, and I plan to follow up when I visit San Francisco, where one of them lives. (Side note: If you have college-bound women in your orbit, links to evaluate the all-women option are at the bottom of this post.)
Reunion was an excuse for the rest of the trip: a two-day stop in Boston
before Wellesley, and a four-day stay afterward in Rhode Island, which I had never visited. I have friends from my twenties in both places, and it was a delight to reconnect. We discussed retirement, as we are all in that stage. We discussed current challenges, like the gender transition of my friend's child; and the painful sitting disability of another of my friends, who has been able to resolve it after 17 years of searching for a solution, eventually finding the right neurosurgeon in Maryland.
Everyone has activities about which they are excited: an upcoming trip to Iceland; a two-week visit from eight-year-old twin grandnephews; a continuing-ed class about modern historic moments in U.S.
We reminded each other of who we were in those years right after college, when we all lived in Boston. We reminisced about the financial struggles, the highs and lows of searching for love, and the ridiculous things we enjoyed doing, such as waiting in line outside in the frigid winter to get ice cream at the city's best place, Steve's Ice Cream.
Every one my three girlfriends from those days was like a rare collectible—unique, intriguing, and invaluable. While they were on their own life paths and I was occupied forging mine, we managed to keep tabs on each other. We generated fun, offered unsolicited advice, relied on each other's insight about people and situations, understood each other better than we understood ourselves.
My Rhode Island friends took me to two of the stunning waterfront locations that the small state boasts: the Cliff Walk in Newport and Beavertail Lighthouse in Jamestown.
We toured one of the Newport mansions, worth doing if you ask me. We strolled the little town of Warwick, perfect for buying souvenirs. We lunched waterside at the Bay Voyage Inn in Jamestown, where I stayed a couple of nights. On one of the evenings I had to myself in Jamestown, I came across a town meeting with Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, whom I didn't know, but was pleased to listen to.
In Boston, I retraced old paths,
rode familiar subway and bus routes, and for the first time entered Old South Church, dating from 1669.
It's one of the city's many historic churches, splendid pieces of architecture to which I had never paid attention in the seven years I lived there. About time.
Wellesley wasn't always easy and neither was Boston, but we aren't meant to always have it easy.
Many of the friends you meet in such times begin as situational relationships that tend to dissolve when the situation changes. But with any luck, as you move on, the situation becomes an advantage, and the relationships become enduring friendships.
I am ever grateful for it all.
For college-bound women you know, an all-women college is an option they should consider. The links below will help evaluate.
Affordable and lovely B&B in Cambridge/Boston: Irving House at Harvard Square
Charming waterfront stay in Jamestown, RI: Bay Vollage Inn https://www.wyndhambayvoyageinn.com/
Stunning waterfront places in Rhode Island:
Rhode Island public transportation tip: Public city bus No. 60 in Rhode Island takes you from Providence to Newport, and vice versa, for $2. Takes exact cash. Runs every half hour or so. Various stops along the way. Get on at Kennedy Plaza in Providence or at Newport Transit Center in Newport. Entire ride takes about an hour.
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