Here’s what I’ve thought lately. What if I made the claim:

William and Mary isn’t a place. It’s an idea.

Sure, there’s our arresting physical grounds, which popular national consensus agrees are amongst the nations’ most striking. There’s sunset over Gloucester Point from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. There’s the Crim Dell reflecting, always, kaleidoscopic, the world around it. There’s Wren – the oldest building of its kind – but without it, there would still be William and Mary.

The idea of William and Mary can’t be reduced to bricks and mortar. An ocean away from Wren, William and Mary was all around me during my spring semester. That’s because William and Mary is about connection – a robust, lifelong connection – and when William and Mary people gather, the College is wherever they are. This week, the College celebrated I Am W&M week.

In just the past two months, here are a few of the ways I’ve been William and Mary:

In February, fraternity brother Jake Schneider ’14 trained up from Oxford University to spend the weekend in Edinburgh. We hiked William and Mary to the very top of Arthur’s Seat overlooking the city.

Jake Schneider '14 in Edinburgh

The following week, I traveled for 4 days with Glasgow University graduate student Hayley Rushing ’11 – we were William and Mary all around the Isle of Skye. I noticed we inadvertently wore William and Mary to dinner. Me via tie and her via a cipher pendant.

Looking Haberdashing at Dinner

Just a few days after returning from Skye, I found myself walking William and Mary around the seaside outside of St Andrews with University of St Andrews graduate student Brittany Fallon ’11.

Fish and Chips and William and Mary

Five days after that, I flew out to Switzerland to visit study abroad student Madelyn Smith ’13, where we took William and Mary skiing in the Swiss Alps.

William and Mary in Switzerland

In Mid-March, over St Patrick’s Day week, I celebrated the green in William and Mary with friends Skyler Halbritter ’11 and Ryan Eickel ’10 as we took the College all over the Emerald Isle. Here’s William and Mary at the Cliffs of Moher.

William and Mary in Western Ireland

The following week, I met up with Welsh Assembly intern Allyson Zacharoff ’13 and we took William and Mary through the Scottish Parliament. Upon exiting, we were walking up the Royal Mile and found yet more William and Mary walking towards us, on spring break, in the form of Taylor Lain ’15.

Chance W&M encounters on the Royal Mile

That week I also found William and Mary in the form of English Professor Kim Wheatley as I was walking into Waverley train station and she was walking out of it on her way to go see W&M students in our St Andrews Joint Degree Program.

The following week (we’re now in late March) I grabbed an excellent lunch on a beautiful day in Edinburgh with Brian Wall J.D. ’11, a current University of Edinburgh Ph.D. candidate.

Then, just this past week, I hung out with William and Mary in Berlin and Potsdam, via an encore encounter with Madelyn Smith ’13 and Bulgarian Fulbrighter Michael Tsidulko ’11. Here’s William and Mary exploring the grounds of Sanssouci Palace.

W&M in Deutschland

Next week, I’m hosting French expat Allison Averbuch ’11 for four days of Scottish fun, and the week after that (after making a detour [pilgrimage?] via Warner Brother’s Harry Potter Studio outside of London w/ Hayley Rushing ’11) I’ll be heading back to the United States!

There’s a line from the College’s Hymn that remarks: Our hearts are with Thee, dear William and Mary, however far we stray.

And I think that’s just right, isn’t it? This connection is a powerful thing. It spans class years and continents.

From February through April – or anytime and anywhere – we are all William and Mary.

Go Tribe.

Last week I made a big choice.

I declined offers and withdrew outstanding applications from each law school across the country that I’d applied to last Fall.

Last week, I pressed the “Submit” button on my Statement of Intention for law school.

Last week, on the forms for other schools, under the heading “If Declining, What Are Your Plans for Next Year?” I scrawled two words: Go Tribe.

Last week, I officially accepted my place as a member of William & Mary Law’s Class of 2015.

The decision was the fruit of countless phone conversations, email threads, Skype chats, trusted counsel and long dinners. Advice was sought from peers young and old, alumni dead and alive, Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers, and Millennials. Lawyers and non-lawyers. Advice was sought from the distilling of tea leaves, the reading of stars, the presence or absence of black cats crossing roads, and the lyrics of Lupe Fiasco, John Mayer, and, though I’m loathe to admit it – Old Crow Medicine Show.

It should surprise no one that when it comes to law school, everybody, even dead people, have their opinions.

When the dust settles, though, and Skype makes it’s cheerful little blooping sound indicating your video call is at its end, it’s just you. And the more I thought about it, the more I learned to do something simpler than reading star charts: to go with my instincts on this one.

So after an application process that seems like a lifetime, here’s where I stand:

During his Opening Convocation remarks on a hot August day in 1998, then-President Tim Sullivan asked a crowd of very green (and gold?) freshmen: “Why are we here?”

I’m sure as that question hung thick in the August air between the brick embrace and long late afternoon shadows of the country’s oldest college building, not a small number of freshmen must have swallowed hard, looked around, and thought to themselves, “Jesus, what am I doing here?”

How do I know this? Because on August 31st 2007, that freshman was me. The venue was the same, but the remarks were delivered by a different man, the College’s then-26th President, Gene Nichol.

On that day, many of us were thankful that the summer heat and business casual attire were sufficient to explain away the sweating, both real and imagined, that accompanied that ceremony. After honoring College alumni of remarkable achievement and prominence, alumni who gave of their lives in service of a greater good, there wasn’t anyone amongst us not a little bit alarmed as Nichol opened his arms wide, that metal badge of the President’s Office bigger than a Kanye West necklace swinging across his chest, and asked, no, demanded of us in that voice of so much passion: “What will you do for others?”

This past week, I’ve found myself anticipating my second Convocation – one that, perhaps five years ago, I’d never have expected. But this Convocation will be different in crucial ways from my first. While many questions remain unanswered about what the coming years will hold for me at William & Mary, I arrive armed with an answer I was not, could never, have been in possession of as a freshman. One surety Sullivan didn’t anticipate fourteen Augusts ago.

I spent my undergraduate years striving, at every opportunity, to answer Nichol’s question for myself. To make sure that as I moved through William & Mary, I never lost sight of that one crucial thing that was asked of us years prior. And although I will spend much, if not more, of my time trying to continue answering that question in law school, I realize in hindsight that in my efforts to answer Nichol’s question, I inadvertently answered Sullivan’s as well.

To Nichol’s question, I left bits of answers in Nicaragua, Honduras, Romania, Haiti, Petersburg, Williamsburg and North Carolina. There’s a stone on the Senior Walk of Old Campus with a big fat percentage next to “Class of 2011,” but even that, I suppose, is only a piece of an answer. I can always do more. That was Nichol’s goal: he understood humanity’s need for service to be unquenchable. There are always injustices left to fight, causes left to champion, voices unheard and long silenced left to speak on behalf of and liberate from censure. I know now, because of my own desire to do more, that Nichol imagined a William & Mary that graduated students of unmatched eagerness into a world of unrelenting need. Students who walked tall, pressed their aspirations and staked their claim. Students trained to speak, as the adage goes, even when their voices shake. The perfect compliment of any university to the world outside its gates. That inability to accept that the world can’t be a better or more just place was to be the most common denominator of our shared humanity with those living outside the brick walls and creeping ivy of William & Mary. By having experienced firsthand a workable campus model of democracy, fairness, literacy, service, and diversity of class, race, perspective, orientation and religion for all, students would seek to expand and make viable that model for larger communities. The nation’s first law school, with its history as the legal training ground of citizen lawyers, will empower me to operationalize my understanding of this fact in the powerful, and legal, service of others. William & Mary is singular because when it was established in 1779 at the urging of Thomas Jefferson, it became the first of its kind to recognize this need and devote the resources towards addressing it. William & Mary’s is the model upon which legal education was built.

Nichol’s question informed how my first chapter at William & Mary unfolded, it’s complexities a catalyst for my second.

Sullivan’s question, however, gets at the why of William & Mary for me.

That’s an answer I came to earlier last week, and it requires remarkably less exposition:

I am returning because William & Mary is my home. Because it understood all of these things nine years before the Constitution and ten years before the Bill of Rights. Because it’s where I learned to be my best self, alongside peers and faculty who were encouraged to be the same.

Because it has the Cheese Shop.

Because it preaches citizenship in a world of selfishness, and because for my legal education, I cannot imagine being anywhere else.

This August, I’ll have unfinished business.

Go Tribe,

Brian ’11, J.D. ’15

Yesterday a very strange thing happened to me.

I was asked to attend a meeting in the University of Edinburgh’s International Office. Edinburgh’s North American outreach officers wanted to meet with me to discuss the university’s strategic policy for recruiting American students. Like all such meetings, we started with small chat. Introductions. When prompted, I let slip that I graduated from William & Mary this past year. One of the international officers remarked “excellent school,” while his colleague let slip something I almost wouldn’t have caught if I wasn’t paying attention. He said “you know William & Mary’s founder graduated from Edinburgh.”

Say what?

This whole week has been more than a little strange for me as I’ve read messages, seen pictures, and been bombarded by excited tweets (#wmcharterday) as friends across an ocean from me exchange their excitement and plans for Charter Day weekend. If I were still at William & Mary, this week would have been the busiest of my entire year. Over here, though, it’s a week like any other.

This simple fact underscores the precise reason why the comment out of the blue that I heard in my meeting yesterday made me feel like I had cotton in my ears. How had I not known that the founder of my own alma mater had attended my graduate school? And how had this come up just two days before Charter Day? In all honesty, I’d never thought to ask. The groundwork for the making of William & Mary before 1693 was never stressed at Charter Day. Everything beyond 319 years ago is fuzzy, right?

Well, as history would have it, the Reverend James Blair – just James then – attended the University of Edinburgh from 1669-1773. It’s where he received his formal education. After graduation, Blair, a Scot, remained in Edinburgh studying theology. In fact, he studied right where I now live on the Mound. When he was placed in the colonies, Blair took his appreciation for education gained at Edinburgh – the world’s first true civic, public university – with him to Virginia, where his ascent within colonial society was meteoric. Less than twenty years after Blair graduated from Edinburgh, he stood – as influential Reverend – before King William and Queen Mary at Kensington Palace asking for a royal charter that would allow him to establish “a certain place of universal study.”

Well, we all know Blair got that charter, and 319 years later, Blair’s vision – this College – is stronger than ever.

It’s safe to say that without William & Mary – the alma mater of a nation – our country would probably look a lot different than it does today. Yesterday I learned that without Edinburgh, and my future fellow alumni James Blair’s education here, there might never have been a William & Mary.

There’s no doubt: the world works in strange ways. Perhaps you believe in fate, or signs, or both – and perhaps you don’t. Regardless, there’s no denying that my connection with William & Mary has grown and matured this year through the strangest of serendipities. I’m writing this blog post from my dorm, which adjoins the University’s divinity school, where my alma mater’s founder studied and grew intellectually over 340 years ago. Just as I am now.

Perhaps it’s here, amongst the stones and passageways that I walk every day, in the ancient lecture halls, and in the reflections of centuries old stained glass in the theology library that I spent my morning in, that the very first foundations of William & Mary were truly laid in a young man’s head.

I cannot be in Williamsburg to celebrate the College’s 319th birthday this weekend like I’d like – but the past 24 hours have taught me that William & Mary has an incredible way of never leaving your side. Despite distance, my connection with the Tribe this weekend – and the man responsible for it – feels stronger than ever.

Friday afternoon, the entire William & Mary family will gather in W&M Hall to celebrate an institution that is truly unlike any other university in the United States.

At that same time I’ll be here – exactly where a young James Blair of my same age was four centuries ago – amidst the books and lecture halls where William & Mary’s founding was really given possibility.

There’s something really special for me in that.

Go Tribe and Hark Upon the Gale,

Brian ’11

A portrait of James Blair that hangs in the College's Wren Great Hall

Here’s a fact that I was reminded of yesterday: If you wear W&M gear, your world becomes smaller.

Earlier this year I reported how I was with a friend studying for the LSAT in Reston, VA. We took a break to grab a coffee and were heralded by the businessman behind us, whose daughter graduated from W&M some years past. I was wearing a W&M baseball cap. We got to talking, and he discussed how much he loved W&M through his daughter’s time there. In the end, we both got coffees and business cards. “If you ever need anything, you don’t ever hesitate to let me know.”

W&M’ers love airports. That’s a fact. With the highest study abroad rate for any public doctoral-granting university in the US, you can bet that if you’re going to encounter W&M people anywhere, it’s while traveling.

Two years ago, I was traveling with Findlay Parke ’11 to go and spend some of the summer on a dude ranch out in Wyoming with his family. I was wearing my W&M hat and we heard a random “Go Tribe” shouted at us from behind us in the boarding line. Another W&M fan, and another conversation.

Two days later, we were seated at a table at a ranch in the middle of Saddlestring, Wyoming. I had the hat on and it turned out the man sitting across from us at the table with his family was an alumni. That made the conversation way more exciting.

This past fall, I was traveling to London with my parents and spied across the boarding gate a W&M student wearing his freshman class t-shirt that all students are given during orientation. So, I went up and introduced myself. It turns out that particular student was heading to Beijing for the semester – we talked about W&M and got to know one another. His shirt, which said Raise the Green and Gold, did just that in the airport that day.

Last week in London’s Heathrow International Airport, Hayley Rushing ’11, a fellow W&M alumni and Scotland graduate student ran into a member of the Class of 2014 who was headed off to study abroad at W&M’s Oxford University program. They chatted and shared their love for W&M.

I found this out on Twitter. News of little W&M moments spreads quickly. People get excited.

Yesterday I was flying from DC, through London, back to Scotland for the spring term at Edinburgh. I hadn’t been wearing it at all previously but for some reason I took my W&M hat out of my backpack and threw it on my head. Bad post-flight-have-not-showered-hair-situation or something. I have a thing I do now: whenever I’m walking through an airport, I put on my W&M hat. I throw it in my backpack before I leave the house. Call it previous experience.

Keep this in mind: my layover was only 40 minutes long.

I was walking through Terminal 5 headed to my gate when all of the sudden I hear my name, turn around, and have Moey Fox ’13 run into my arms. Moey was headed off to Florence, Italy, to study abroad for the semester. Now I have a standing invitation to Florence I may have to take up. We chatted a bit and I thought to myself, what a small world this is.

Well—it got even smaller.

When I arrived at my gate I was sitting on the ground charging my UK phone when I heard my name called again. I looked up and found old friend Kira Allman ’10 standing above me. I jumped up and collected my second hug and smile from my time in Heathrow—who is that lucky during layovers and jetlags? Kira was traveling with her boyfriend, both of them graduate students at Oxford University, on their way to Geneva where he was presenting at a conference. Her gate was right next to mine. We made plans for me to visit Oxford in the Spring. Plans I intend to keep.

4 minutes. 3 people I knew. 2 W&M moments. 1 over-whelming sense of wow.

Moral: Don’t just love W&M, or remember it—wear your affection on your sleeve. Or your head. Or anywhere. Green and gold are a handsome combination. Even if it’s just a hat you keep in your backpack, throw it on from time to time.

This place is incredible. It binds people with a sense of community that stretches beyond Williamsburg and reaches its fingers across the globe. Spread the word. The smallest of gestures – like wearing a hat – can introduce you to new faces, earn you coffees, connections and conversations, or reunite you with some very old friends in some very odd places.

Do yourself a favor: http://wm.bncollege.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/SubcategoryView?catalogId=10001&storeId=17554&categoryId=40038&parentCatId=40006&topCatId=40000&langId=-1

Go Tribe,

Brian ’11

After graduation, William and Mary people go on to do a lot of different things in a lot of different places. Here’s a slice:

• 

  Me '11, Hayley Rushing '11, Bailey Thomson '10, Michael Tsidulko '11

  Me: Well you all know I’m pursuing a masters degree at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in socio-political linguistics and critical discourse analysis in American political campaigning.

• Hayley Rushing ’11: Is pursuing her MLitt in Playwriting and Dramaturgy at the University of Glasgow in Scotland; she’s the one with the W&M scarf on.
• Bailey Thomson ’10: Is fulfilling her commitment to Teach for America as a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Corps, teaching 3rd grade math to underprivileged youth for Rocketship Education.
• Michael Tsidulko ’11: Is fulfilling a Fulbright Scholarship in south-central Bulgaria as an English Teaching Assistant in the town of Dimitrovgrad (or Димитровград if you prefer).

We’re all a long way from the College, and from one another. But that’s never really stopped William & Mary people.

This Thanksgiving was going to be the first time in my life that I’ve been out of the United States, without family, for one of my favorite holidays. So Bailey and Michael came up with a novel idea – they’d bring a bit of my Tribe family to Scotland so I didn’t have to be alone.

Bailey flew from San Francisco and Michael from Sofia so I wouldn’t be without family for Thanksgiving.

As a result, I had one of the most incredible Thanksgivings I will probably ever experience.

From different continents, career paths, fields of study and graduation years – William & Mary binds you.

I’m aware now, more than ever, that my Tribe is a family 90,000 strong.

That’s tens of thousands of reasons to be thankful.

Bailey '10 dons a W&M Griffin hood.

College pennant in my flat in Edinburgh

Green & Gold

I thought that by moving to Scotland I’d be a bit further away from William and Mary than I’ve been used to for the past four years, but while the physical distance between me and the colonial capital may have increased, William and Mary is as present as ever in my life. In ways both noticeable and less so, the College left me with friends, grounding, confidence, a community and the ability to thrive and make the most of novel opportunity. William and Mary taught me the meaning of persistence.

Your relationships from W&M will be with you, Now & Always.

Here are a few of the ways W&M has manifested itself in very noticeable ways during the fall so far in Scotland:

• I’ve spent time in St Andrews and Edinburgh with alumni Brit Fallon ’11 who is pursuing her PhD at St Andrews studying chimpanzee communication.
• I’ve caught up with a cohort of the W&M students studying abroad at Scottish universities this semester.
• Last week I stayed up until 2 a.m. GMT/BST so that I could take part via Skype with the Young Guarde Council and Alumni Chapter Representatives fine-tuning last minute details for what promises to be an amazing homecoming weekend.
• This past weekend, I traveled down to London to take the LSAT and was hosted and hung out with the family of a fraternity brother from W&M. I took the LSAT just a stone’s throw away from St Paul’s Cathedral in the city, where Sir Christopher Wren, who designed both the famous Cathedral and the arguably more agreeable Wren Building at W&M, is buried.
• This Saturday, I’m headed west to Glasgow to spend the day with a fellow W&M alumni, Hayley Rushing ’11, who is pursuing her MLitt in Master’s and Playwriting at the theatrical powerhouse.
• A week from today, I’ll head up to St Andrews where William and Mary has a joint degree partnership. There, I’ll be catching up and breaking bread with Jodi Fisler M.Ed ’05, Ph.D ’10, the Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs who will be in St Andrews working on the degree program.
• In 19 days, I’m flying to Porto in western Portugal where I’ll meet up with a W&M alumni taking a year off between undergraduate and law school to live and au pair in Paris. We’ll spend four days relaxing on the Portuguese coast and likely reminiscing about W&M.
• For a week in November over Thanksgiving fellow blogger Bailey Thomson ’10 will be visiting me in Edinburgh. The packed schedule includes a potential trip down to London for Thanksgiving day for an expatriate meal in the city with other fellow W&M alumni.
• Later in the year I have plans to visit several other alumni who are attending graduate school, pursuing Fulbright scholarships, and doing democracy monitoring in Florence, Bulgaria and Bosnia respectively.

There have been less noticeable contributions from W&M, too:

• This past Saturday I was interviewed for a law school by one of its alumnus. The interview, which was probably supposed to be a quick assessment of my fitness for law school, lasted almost an hour and a half as the successful alumni and I discussed and laughed about everything possible regarding school, undergraduate education, current events and life in the UK. My education at W&M taught me that those who have a human touch will always accomplish more than those who lack it. As a result of my time and opportunities at W&M, I thrive in interview settings.
• I am interning and doing research for an MSP at the Scottish Parliament. My time at William and Mary that I spent interning in the Virginia General Assembly and coordinating the College’s Richmond Interns program taught me everything I would need to know to work in any political environment – even if that environment is in a different country. My time at W&M furnished me with the experiences necessary to interview my way into an internship position otherwise not open to students and the ability to work with the majority nationalist party despite being a foreign national at a truly formative time in Scottish history. My research experience from W&M allows me to turn out politically, linguistically and legally important research and has given me the opportunity to potentially transform my masters dissertation research into a motion that will be of political benefit to my MSP and wind up becoming a motion before the sitting Parliament.
• This week I am standing for multiple student government positions in the student body elections for the Edinburgh University Students’ Association. W&M taught me that if there are things you want to change – stick your neck out. The transforming nature of student/administration interaction at W&M is where real progress is accomplished; that’s a model I plan to continue to implement at Edinburgh if elected. Whereas some students graduate from university asking “Why should it be me?” William and Mary students graduate asking: “What more can I do for others?” and “Why not me?”
• Next week I am meeting with the Directors of Development and Alumni Engagement at Edinburgh to discuss developing an internship wherein I’ll be able to put into practice a number of the things I learned at William and Mary in Development and the Alumni Association. On a whim I sent an email to the directors of the respective initiatives. I got an email response saying they’d never had a student reach out with such interest and had recently been talking about how nice it would be to take on a selected student who would have the opportunity to work with the trust and development boards as well as the alumni association to achieve new levels of student/administration collaboration. William and Mary taught me that if there’s something you want to do that doesn’t exist – create an opportunity for yourself.

Perhaps the reason W&M has been on my mind these past few days is the most obvious of all: in 11 days I am boarding a flight headed back to Williamsburg for 4 days to enjoy homecoming. The missed class, layovers and jet lag don’t deter me at all. My journey will involve trains, taxis, buses, cars and airplanes. But nothing bothers you when you’ve been away and you finally find yourself returning to the place and people that created, well, you.

That’s an odd sensation, isn’t it? Returning to the place where the ‘you’ that you’re familiar with started; to the people you were with when it happened. I owe a great deal of myself to the circumstances of William and Mary.

My gmail has been blowing up with messages to and from fellow alums exchanging our plans and excitement for the weekend. Elaborate schemes are hatching. Even my parents are coming down for events and meals.

Out of all the exciting places and new opportunities presenting themselves in October, it’s safe to say none are more exciting than the prospect of returning. On October 20-23rd there’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be than William and Mary.

I’ve been thinking to myself: In 11 days, I’ll be home.

I really, really like the sound of that.

Brian ’11

This February during Charter Day, William & Mary will turn 319 years old. There are a great many things in the world that are younger than the ancient College, which has influenced the world and educated those who shape it in various forms throughout the course of five different centuries. Today, students walk amongst a campus that has existed since the 17th Century. Consider that in 1693:

• The infamous pirate Blackbeard would not be killed for another 25 years.
• The steam engine would not be invented for another six years.
• The American Declaration of Independence would not be adopted for another 83 years.
• The American, French and Industrial Revolutions would not take place until the following century.
• Voltaire wasn’t born yet.
• John Locke and Issac Newton were still alive and contributing to the Age of Enlightenment.
• W&M was 15 by the time Bach was appointed chamber musician at the court in Weimar.
• 47 years later Handel’s Messiah would first be performed.
• 59 years later, Benjamin Franklin would have a run-in with electricity.
• 63 years later, Mozart would be born.
• 76 years later, Napolean would be born.
• The original Tea Party (of the Boston variety) takes place a full 80 years later.
• 85 years later, Hawaii is discovered.
• 92 years later, America adopts the dollar.
• 96 years later, French protestors would storm the Bastille.
• 100 years after W&M is founded, the Cotton Gin was invented and construction began on the US Capitol.
• W&M had existed for 111 years by the time Lewis & Clark began their expedition.
• W&M was already celebrating its 112th birthday by the time the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved.
• The US gained Florida from Spain on W&M’s 126th birthday.
• Charles Darwin sailed aboard the H.M.S. Beagle 138 years later.
• The first telegraph would not be dispatched for another 151 years.
• The planet Neptune would not be known to exist for another 153.
• Brian Focarino would not be born for another 295 years.

I think I’ll stop there.

Truly there is only one William and Mary. and it’s old.

WARNING: JUICY GOSSIP ENSUES.

Unblemished, aseptic prospective students (and parents) cover your chaste eyes.

Let’s be serious with one another: some students (and their families) plan cross-country college visits that could rival the breadth and scope of a Spice Girls reunion tour. “The Grand Tour” is just one in a sacred inventory of overachieving high school student commandments:

COMMANDMENT: Thou Shalt Visit All Colleges Under Consideration For Matriculation

- sub – Thou Shalt Purchase Requisite T-Shirt

- sub – Thou Shalt Exchange ‘Knowing Looks’ With Parents

- sub – Thou Shalt Hoard In Gross Fashion All Admissions Literature

Today my younger brother kicked off his own Grand Tour, so my mother and myself traveled with him, a high school junior to somewhere along the East Coast to attend an information session and tour at a prestigious university I would describe as a ‘peer’ of William and Mary’s. If you’re a prospective student, this school is likely located on your “Top 100″ list of schools you can’t seem to narrow down and want to apply to still. It was on mine. It’s on my brother’s.

I’m trying to achieve this “impartial big brother” thing where I don’t attempt to force William and Mary down my younger brother’s throat. If he’s given the privilege of attending, I’m trying to lie and make him feel like if he doesn’t, I will not forsake him (despite the fact that he will be, quite literally, dead to me). So in order to show him I’m playing fair I have opted to attend some of his visits to other universities.

Today’s was the first college tour I’ve been on in over four years that wasn’t a William and Mary tour, having spent the better part of my undergraduate career giving tours, frequently multiple times a week, to prospects and their families looking to see if William and Mary was “right” for them. I came into the day excited to see how another school presented itself, how their student tour guides came across and how my brother reacted. I tried (rather impossibly when all is said and done) to pretend that I, like my younger brother, was a wide-eyed youth, scared, also looking to see if this school would be a good fit for me. My mother also tried to pretend as a parent that she’s not a total Tribe-o-phile like me. When we were leaving her car she even opted to leave all our legion of standard MASSIVELY OBNOXIOUS green and gold umbrellas in the car, instead opting for a modest little black number. Good call; big of us. Pats on backs.

I also tried to pretend that I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree, harbor an adrenalized attachment to my alma mater that borders on caricature and consider myself one of the most tempestuous college tour guides to ever grace a college campus (out with moderation, I always say!) I also tried to pretend that I hadn’t literally given hundreds of these things before to people like me and families much like my own.

The admissions session was what you would anticipate – there’s only so much you can do here, so you’ll have to pardon deans for having to run through a number of the more-requisite statistics and basic admissions housekeeping matters. The sessions, while important, are bound to be somewhat similar for all truly competitive universities. For ours, many of the typical rules applied: dean that somehow managed to reach an octave that just surpassed a whisper despite using a microphone (um, what?); baby cried more or less constantly in background; construction was being done on admissions building so session took place in room with poor acoustics (of course); when prompted to ask questions relating to admissions, people nevertheless miraculously managed to ask about the meal plan (much to the restless shifting in seats of all others in attendance), etc. Blah blah blah.

Now we get to the juicy part: the student-led tour. This is the make or break moment for a school and a student, except the burden of proof in this case (unlike in actual admissions) is on the school vis-à-vis a perky hyper-committed student body representative pumped up on double espresso shots. As a judgmental tour guide myself, I actually was impressed by our tour guide. Alarming perkiness aside, she was clearly in love with her university and happy to be there (despite never calling it home), which is precisely what my younger brother (and others in attendance) needed to see. We were happy we got this particular tour guide in the fantasy draft that frequently happens between guides following admissions sessions; the others looked, in our opinion, ‘iffy.’

No qualification of that statement needed. If you’ve been on college tours, you know what I mean. The ‘iffy’ tour guide (over-perky? wearing only school colors, socks too? because that’s normal? strange obviously non-representative sample of student body? looks pissed to be there? biology and self-designed Japanese puppet theater major? etc). We hustled to be placed into our chosen tour guide’s tour after in about a split second we all exchanged the blink/death-stare combo developed amongst cultivated families that very quickly conveys:

doyouseewhatisee?goodyoudotoo.icannotbelievehowstrangethisis.quick,hustle,thegoodoneisgettingaway.

It wasn’t the tour guide that sunk this school for me, the pretending-to-be-a-normal-prospective student. It was the school, the more objective parts – the parts you can’t embellish or cover up with clear articulation, good weather or a reassuring smile. When you’re younger you learn a saying: the bigger they are the harder they fall. I find that this applies to colleges – once the string starts to unravel, stuff get’s ugly real quick.

Some things you should know:

1. My family asks the tough questions. We’re those people. Or at least I am. We’re not interested in how you as a tour guide like the roast beef in the dining hall, we’re interested in whether or not you as a freshman have the ability to secure classes you are actually interested in during the add-drop period. Whether or not professors know your name. I was proud of my younger brother for the questions that he asked of the dean and of the student. These were game-changers.
2. I think it’s a myth that any one place can be completely a small liberal arts college and a possess the resources of a truly robust research institution. While some of the best schools in the nation will have a mixture of each, it’s impossible in my mind to land directly in the middle. Students will need to choose which is truly more important to them: a legitimate, time-tested small liberal arts education or a large, robustly research-focused university education.
3. If you have to take a gamble on one or the other, go with a truly small liberal arts university. You can go to grad school for the big university part, but you can never recreate the magical four years of intimate relationships that a small university provides.

Here are some of the questions that my family asked today that gave me a sour impression of this particular school, and made me thank my lucky stars that I ever stumbled ignorant onto William and Mary’s campus for the first time one rainy November morning six years ago:

Q1: Is it possible for students to get classes they’re really interested in during Add/Drop, especially as freshmen?

A1: Students will end up with the classes that they need at the end of their four years – that won’t always be the classes that they want.

(in my head: I would never want to be at the end of a pecking order of 15,000 or more students in terms of picking classes. I want to take the classes that interest me in addition to taking classes I need to graduate, and I don’t want my parents to be paying for me to take classes that don’t interest me. Strike one.)

Q2: Tell us about some of your classes as a freshman. What were the sizes like?

A2: Well I learned that I had to sit in the front of my classes after the first couple of weeks. I was in an intro to econ class and found myself not paying attention the first couple of days because I was distracted by the people Facebooking, Tweeting, Crosswording and reading the news around me on their laptops. The class had 500 people in it so I had to put myself in the third row but things got much better from there. You should know that I did have one class, however, that had only 30 students in it my freshman year, so small classes are possible. For large classes discussion sections are held that are much smaller and taught by TAs so that simulates the small school feel.

(in my head: 30 students is small all of the sudden? My junior year at William and Mary I had a class with six people in it and two professors. We held some of our classes at an Indian restaurant down the street from campus since the class met during lunchtime and we all liked the Indian buffet a lot while studying an Indian language. When I was a freshman, I was in two classes that only had 12 students each. We were the absolute center of our professor’s attention.)

(in my head: I cringe at the word TA. As a graduate student myself, I fully recognize that I am not a professor and have nowhere near the experience and teaching prowess that a professor does. At William and Mary we pride ourselves on not having TAs do any teaching, but here TAs are being used to simulate actually having a small class?)

(in my head: A class of 500 people scares me. I can honestly say I probably would have skipped it a lot as a freshman due to lack of vested interest, especially because this particular tour guide’s 500 person econ lecture was at 9 a.m. MWF. Even William and Mary’s largest classes rarely exceed 150 students, and that’s only one or two of them. And why were so many people Facebooking so as to distract you from the front of the classroom for two hours? Was the professor that boring? Strike Two.)

Q3 (from another person): Do professors know students by name?

A3: Some students will get to know some of their professors and some you’ll even get to know well, it just depends on how much time you’re willing to invest.

(in my head: At William and Mary even if you’re not attending class a professor knows all of their students by name regardless of what year you are. At William and Mary, I never had to earn the right to be friends with my professors by being an upperclassman, I knew every single professor very well, they knew me well and I’ve had countless off-the-books meals, travels, conversations and consultations with faculty who I have viewed in turn as friends, mentors, exceptional scholars, sounding boards, travel companions and partners in crime. Strike Three.)

My first college tour in five years left me reeling with a single feeling: I could never be thankful enough that I found William and Mary. My education there was without peer, unlike what much of these admissions tours would seem to suggest. At William and Mary, you are the center of everyone’s attention – there are no substitutes or minor exceptions.

so cool. disgusting street cred.

It also made me realize that our admissions team is way cooler than the typical dean-ish looking sleepy-hollow of a woman who greeted my family this morning and spoke at an inaudible whisper. Our admissions team gesticulates wildly, shouts, cheers, freaks out and can frequently be found laughing and then choking from laughing. That’s not because they’re insane, that’s because they’re insanely excited about what they have to share about William and Mary. Would it be too honest to say that the admission session I went to this morning felt like I was attending the wake of a loved one, rather than learning about how ‘exciting’ my life was going to be for the next four years at XYZ university? The dean looked like she could break out into fits of sobbing at any given moment and it wouldn’t feel out of place.

This much is certain:

There is only one William & Mary

and it can be yours.

William and Mary doesn’t have peers if you’re looking beyond SATs and other statistical indicators. The feel is irreplicable (I’m going to stick by this imaginary word because it works so just roll with it). Come visit. Ask tough questions and receive the answers you actually want to hear. Have a dean joke with you so long you get scared. No exceptions. At William and Mary, there are no wrong answers.

I wasn’t adorned in green and gold or scowling the whole time today, but I can say I was tremendously proud of my alma mater on the campus of another outstanding ‘peer’ institution. As an alumni, that’s huge. When all was said and done and we loaded in the car and prepared for the highway ride home, my younger brother remarked:

“I liked this place but I’m excited to visit William & Mary and have my official college visit there.”

Come again?

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

With so much love for my Tribe,

Brian Focarino ’11

my battered, original copy of "The Public Ivys"

26 years ago a book was published by Richard Moll, a former dean of admissions at UC Santa Cruz, Vassar, Bowdoin, Harvard and Yale. His seminal work, The Public Ivys, precipitated a movement that would catch the attention of the best and brightest of the nation’s college generation. In increasing numbers, these students would opt to matriculate at highly selective public universities rather than their private counterparts. Changing views of prestige were sweeping higher education at the time, and a small handful of public universities enjoyed a special vogue and reputation that Moll believed challenged the foundations of how we as a country viewed higher education.

The Public Ivys forever christened and profiled the nation’s eight preeminent public universities:

1. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg
2. University of California (Berkeley, Los Angeles, et al)
3. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
4. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
5. University of Vermont, Burlington
6. University of Texas, Austin
7. Miami University of Ohio
8. University of Virginia, Charlottesville

an old picture of the Wren building covered in ivy

William and Mary, however, has long since rid its buildings of the physical ivy that used to cover them, recognizing that our structures are far too ancient and valuable to have their bricks subjected to ivy growth. While ivy still creeps around the corners of ancient campus and other parts of the Colonial college, William and Mary has historically opted for the presence of towering southern magnolias and traditional Virginian oaks to populate the halcyon campus of a school that U.S. News and World Report styles “the best small public university in America.” In that sense, there’s mercifully little of what we might consider traditionally ivy about William and Mary at all: we’ve always preferred a good southern magnolia. They’re more handsome, provide better shade, flower beautifully and, most importantly, leave our ancient bricks alone.

The College, initially conceived before any other college or university in the nation, is singular in its place in American higher education. Namely, for starters, at the beginning of it all. While it hardly sits around and rests on its 318-year-old laurels, many of Moll’s observations from 26 years ago still ring true today. Founded by English sovereigns, surrounded by a sprawling living museum and situated at the forefront of the American experiment, despite comparisons W&M doesn’t “keep up with the Joneses.” It is the Joneses.

W&M Combines An Uncommon Setting….

• “That’s why every Mom and Dad would like to put their kid here: it’s Americana elegance, doggedly serious, highly selective – and, perhaps most important, it’s a nice place to visit.”
• “Its setting – in historic, charming Williamsburg – and its own lush campus of distinctive Colonial, Georgian and modern buildings, provide the stuff calendars are made of“
• “One cannot depart from William and Mary without paying final respects to the campus itself. Granted, ‘America’s most charming town’ sets the stage well, but the campus, on its own, is breathtaking. The huge, deep green magnolias sprinkled through the 1,200 acres; Lake Matoaka; the sunken garden in the Georgian section; the historic buildings in the Old Colonial section.”

….With an Unmatched Prestige and Feel:

• “William and Mary can make a good case for being the most selective public college in America“
• “It’s size is ideal, the envy of a good many prestigious private colleges.”
• “the very Ivy look, character and quality of this unique institution” allowed William and Mary to become “America’s best kept secret”
• “America, there really is an Ivory Tower”

When picking the ideal campus to spend the best four years of your life, consider this: there are few schools in the country that have roots as deep, walks as beautiful, herringbone bricks as uneven and vistas as green as William and Mary. While classes are important, no matter where you end up you’ll have to walk there. You might as well pick a place where even the walk frequently takes your breath away. Campus is a constant photo shoot that way.

As much as Moll might disagree, other (northern, private) schools without English royal charters can keep the caché of their ‘English’ ivy. At William and Mary, we’ll take elegant magnolias and handsome American oaks.

walking to class under W&M's fall canopy. courtesy of Joel Pattison.

Hark Upon the Gale,

Brian ’11

I have a question: “what exactly happened to my life?”

We talk a lot about lifelong connection at William and Mary. The idea  that William and Mary isn’t a school, but a home. Not a place, but an idea….

Well, commencement was 36 days ago. I left the place, but today I think I began to get the idea.

I traveled for an entire month following graduation, leaving Williamsburg for Haiti, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, the very top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti with lions who don’t know the first thing about William and Mary or liberal arts colleges or colonial architecture…anywhere but home with it’s difficult-to-face, impossible-to-ignore boxes and boxes of William and Mary. Boxes I didn’t want piled anywhere because I didn’t want to see the last four years of my life reincarnated as packing crates and masking tape that were “inconvenient” and “in the way” and that ugly pale beige color.

But days come and go, and with subtle hints from mom, boxes become unpacked and their contents camouflage themselves in the wider world of rooms around my house. And with that unpacking all these things, and memories, find their home into the wider tapestry of “Life Thus Far.” With siblings at school and parents at work, I find myself wandering around this house I haven’t spent too much time in over the past four years except in manic blurs before service trips or hostings of W&M friends during the holidays whose families lived far away. I’m walking past bookshelves and galleries of photos on walls, and I’ve come across an answer to my initial question.

I’m thinking to myself: “William and Mary happened to my life.”

It’s subtle, but it’s always there. It’s etched on my face in every photo over the last four years. It’s spelled out in every smile. It’s every W&M tie that pokes out behind the other ties, every hat with the familiar, comforting “W&M” on the hat rack whose brim sticks out beyond the others. It’s the books bound in green and gold on my family’s bookshelves. I’m walking around my house and I’m realizing, William and Mary isn’t just about me. This isn’t just about my room, it’s about this entire house. It’s about my entire family.

And now I’m walking around faster and faster and I’m thinking to myself “holy cr@p,” is there anywhere that William and Mary hasn’t taken up residence in this home???!?!?!

And now I’m freaking out because I’m wondering if there’s enough shelf space to fit all of this stuff on, so I’m moving things around and praying there’s more storage downstairs to handle all of this old stuff that needs to be replaced by W&M stuff.

And then I’m thinking, “WAIT A MINUTE” how is there already so much William and Mary stuff everywhere and I’m not even done unpacking all of MY W&M STUFF yet. And how is it possible that W&M has such a huge presence in my house when between my four siblings and two parents we must have attended 20 different institutions of higher education…

AND WHOA WHERE DID MY FAMILY ACCUMULATE THAT MANY GREEN LEAFE MUGS (oops…) AND WHY ARE THERE POST IT NOTES FROM SWEM LIBRARY?

So now I’m getting kind of nerdy about it and want to find everything in my house that has to do with W&M and I’ve made a kind of game out of it on this random rainy Tuesday morning in Northern Virginia by myself.

And I’m pretty sure I’ve found a lot of the obvious things now that are in easy to reach places, poking out all around the house. But now I’m thinking back to Commencement and I’m realizing that the whole thing went by so quickly except for one moment. It was Saturday afternoon and we had just finished the Alumni Induction Ceremony and my Mom was with me and she had just pinned my pin onto my sports coat that it was too hot to be wearing in Williamsburg but all the guys and dads were anyways. And my Mom said she wanted to give me something and she wanted to be alone and we walked through the Wren building to a bench right in the middle of ancient campus. And we’re sitting there and she hands me a small, unmarked brown package. So I’m fiddling with this package and opening it like it’s no big deal since it’s not “present time” yet for Commencement weekend and maybe this is a W&M t-shirt with the word alumni or something written on it.

But it’s not, it’s this.

And now I’m shocked, and now I’m sobbing. And I can’t look at my Mom, and all these people are walking past us on ancient campus staring at me. And I don’t usually cry. I’m not embarrassed I just haven’t been that overwhelmed before and it’s really unbelievable to me. I have no composure and am wearing business attire. And I’m balling my eyes out and barely managing to speak and all I can say after two whole minutes of me crying and her sitting next to me crying is: “God I’m going to miss this place so much.” and she replies, “I’m going to miss it, too.”

And I think at that moment I realized I loved my family and W&M more than I’d even known up until that point, and that they weren’t separate but in fact one in the same. That this place, this “school,” changes you. But it didn’t change just me, my whole family fell under the spell that W&M casts, and has cast, for the past 318 years. The very first tradition of W&M is belonging,

“He who comes here, belongs here.”

And I know this isn’t the end of anything, and it’s just the beginning of my lifelong relationship with this old College. But I’m looking at this photo of my graduation and I’m realizing that it wasn’t just me who graduated from W&M, it was my entire family. And I still think I have a lot of crying left to do, even if it’s against my will. And I still know that I could never say “thank you” enough times to this College, for how it transformed me and my family and brought us together.

But I’m going to try.