Actually, these are people who don’t usually even appear in the Notes because they don’t need to the word is already out on what they’re doing. Outrageously successful classmates don’t get to me either. Besides, these are achievements you’d expect from a Penn grad–akin to Scottie Pippin doing a lay-up. I completely ignore the vast bulk of the Notes, the ones that feature indistinguishable reports about so-and-so’s latest promotion at blah-de-blah law firm/investment bank/consulting company. Reading the Notes used to be a casual pastime, but now that my classmates and I are at the age that we’re actually accomplishing things, it’s become an intense one, with complex motives and parameters.

I try to get the most accurate comparison possible by focusing almost exclusively on Notes from fellow 1992 grads. It’s a cross-section of people I can compare myself to we’re bound together in a tenuous but very real way by our Ivy League education. The fact that I don’t know most of the people who submit these Notes doesn’t make a whit of difference. I use the Notes as a status report telling me what I need to accomplish if I want to keep up with the Joneses. The comparison is apt, because they get me hot under the collar and very bothered.īut let me explain. I am an ambitious, competitive, jealous person, which must be why I am obsessed with the Alumni Notes that appear in the back of the Gazette. Every month, I quickly and surreptitiously flip to the section, as if I were about to peek at porn instead of a list of alumni activities.

Your opinion has been duly noted