Caught Between a College Reunion and a High School Graduation
On being sandwiched between the America that was and the America that's coming
It didn’t occur to me until last week that reunions and graduations happen at the same time. Which is a little silly, given that I work in education and have been on both sides of both of those things at various points in my life. But last week it was much more in my face. My father-in-law was in town for his sixtieth reunion at Harvard, and my daughter graduated from Brookline High School.
I should say upfront that I’m aware both of those institutions mark me as someone with a certain kind of privilege. Harvard is Harvard. My father-in-law went there. My partner Alexis went there. I went there. It’s where Alexis and I met. So yes, that tells you something about where I started. Though I’d also say: my dad was first-generation college in his family. He grew up in Pennsylvania thinking he’d end up in the coal mines, and only found out he was going to college at all when his father told him in April of his senior year. He scrambled to apply to Penn State, which is where my parents met. So I come from both of those things simultaneously, which maybe explains a little about why I think education is so important and should be accessible to everyone.
Brookline High is public, but also well funded. When we moved up from North Carolina we worked very hard to be in the Brookline public school system, bought a fixer upper that was still way outside our price range because of the schools, and my daughter has been in Brookline public schools since kindergarten. First at the Lincoln School, same sixty kids in her class K-8. Then Brookline High, which is over two thousand kids and has been a wonderful experience for her. Great teachers, great programs, a ride or die supportive friend group. I have zero complaints.
Anyway. Back to reunions.
My friend Maria says there are two types of people: reunion people and non-reunion people. I think that’s right. I’m also pretty sure you either come from a Scrabble family or not. The Bucars are not a Scrabble family, partly because we are terrible spellers. And I am not a reunion person, for a few reasons. One is that I’m cheap, and the idea of paying more money to a school I already paid so much to attend an event just bugs me. The other is that I’m an introvert, and I cannot handle big loud rooms where people recognize me and I don’t recognize them back. It produces a kind of social dread I avoid.
What’s funny is that my summer job as an undergraduate was running reunions. I worked for the Radcliffe Alumni Association as a student worker in a pretty fancy management position. I placed people in dorm rooms, managed other student workers, and hired and coordinated van drivers. There is one friend of mine (hi Noel!) who will remember the year I had to let her go because she crashed not one van but two. Anyway, the point is I know Harvard/Radcliffe reunions from the inside out, and I still don’t go.
Alexis snuck into a couple of events last week and he saw a bunch of people he hadn’t for years. But that didn’t even tempt me. I focused my energy on my daughter’s graduation: dinner reservations, flowers, stocking tissues, figuring out how to not embarrass her too much but still celebrate her. (One regret: I wish I had done a tacky Wegmans cake with her face on it!)
This week I have been reflecting on that graduation/reunion week, and what it felt like to be between those two events simultaneously. My in-laws are in their eighties. Watching them navigate my stairs, worrying about their health, not knowing what the next five or ten or fifteen years looks like for them, that’s a particular kind of stress. They have had and still have a rich life, but I worry.
My daughter graduating feels different. It feels like grief, even though I’m also really excited for her and I know she’s ready and I know I can’t keep her home with me forever. In the dedication of Beyond Wellness I call her my best friend. She’d agreed she’s my best friend, though she’d also be quick to add that I’m not hers, which is exactly as it should be at eighteen. But still. The unit of three that our family has been, this tight little thing, is changing. And I feel that. (I posted a reel on IG reading a poem by my online writing friend Kathleen Donahoe in case you want to see what a mess I was on graduation day).
What the data says
Today, Pew Research Center released a major national mood report timed to the country’s 250th anniversary, and the numbers felt personal to me because of the week I just had. Most Americans think the country’s best days are behind us. Nearly seven in ten are dissatisfied with the way things are going. But the finding I find upsetting is that young adults report higher levels of happiness about the future than older adults (59% vs. 48%) , and yet are more pessimistic about what that future actually holds. Only 36 percent believe the economy will be stronger and only 24 percent believe the country will be less politically divided by 2050. They feel good but they expect things to get worse.
I find that deeply sad. It feels like a generation that has learned to manage its feelings while letting go of its expectations.
His version/her version
Part of what I kept thinking about last week, in between the reunion and the graduation, is how different my father-in-law’s path through life was from what my daughter is stepping into. His generation had a version of the American dream that was structurally available to him: you worked hard, you built something, you passed it on. That wasn’t just an economic promise, it was a story about your place in a timeline. And it worked for him.
It won’t work the same way for her. She will not become a homeowner at 28 the way her grandparents did. But I also know that the particular housing ladder Alexis and I climbed (cheap condo in Chicago that we renovated it ourselves, sold it and used the equity for a down payment in North Carolina, sold that, used that for Brookline home) is not going to be available to her in the same way.
16 colleges and universities just announced that all in (e.g., tuition, fees, room and board) will exceed $100,000 next year according to The Princeton Review. And that is mind-blowing, even as someone who has been saving for her kid’s college education since she was born. My daughter will be attending Northeastern next year, which I’m thrilled about, partly because the faculty/staff tuition benefit is substantial, partly because I know how well we combine a focus on undergraduate teaching with real world experiences like our co-ops. But a college diploma will not carry the same financial or class status guarantee that it did for her grandfather’s (or my) generation.
My daughter could see that the college application process was harder for her than it was for us. But I don’t think you can ask an eighteen year old to fully reckon with what has structurally shifted, because you can only compare what you’ve lived.
Seven generations
The Haudenosaunee (the People of the Longhouse, known to many as the Iroquois Confederacy) have a the principle that decisions should be made with seven generations in mind. Roughly 150 years into the future. Oren Lyons, a Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, puts it this way in his 1992 UN address: “When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them.” You don’t have to share that cosmology to agree with the weight of that obligation on your actions. That the relevant unit isn’t you, or your family, or even your generation. It’s something much larger and longer than any of us can fully see.
What the Pew data shows is a country that has feelings without a framework for what those feelings are pointing toward. We are happy and lost at the same time. And I think part of why is that we’ve replaced collective stories about the future, the kind that religious and Indigenous traditions have always carried, with an individualized therapeutic language that is really only equipped to help you feel better right now. Optimize your morning. Manage your anxiety. Stay present. That’s not nothing. But it’s not enough.
I want more for my daughter. Not a return to a version of her grandfather’s version of the American dream, because let’s be honest: that was never available to everyone. I want something harder and more honest than that. A version of the future that keeps what makes us human, that pushes back against the oligarchs and the tech bros writing everyone else out of the story, that builds real community rather than performing it, that is curious rather than fearful. A version where community and ethics and justice are central.
I’m stuck, like most of us, in the weight of what’s going wrong right now. But I think the first step is deciding that her generation deserves a story worth inheriting. And then actually trying to write it.
This newsletter is free to read and I hope to keep it that way. If it’s been useful to you, the best way to support this work is to pick up a copy of my new book, Beyond Wellness, where my most developed thinking and storytelling lives. It’s where I go deepest on the questions I raise here.
And if you want to connect in person I have two book events coming up (I would LOVE to see you there):
June 25th, I’ll be joined by Rev. Erick Olsen at the gorgeous Norfolk Library in Norfolk, CT (5:30-7:00). Register for free here.
July 2nd, I’ll be joined by Dr. Emma Jones at my local bookstore, Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, MA (7:00-8:00pm). Register for free here.
I wonder if there’s any National Mood data from previous iterations and how that has changed over time. I’m guessing it’s gotten worse, but would be curious to see for sure if so and how much.
Thank you for sharing this important, and sobering, data. (Also, I have the same best friend dyanmic with my daughter-- I'll take what I can get!)