This time last year, I wasn’t in the mood for a frivolous story featuring privileged college kids. Or at least I didn’t think I was. I was one of an estimated 8.5 million U.S. workers without a job, afraid the U.S. economy was on the brink of collapse. Cash felt distant and elusive; along with unemployment and isolation arrived a monotonous hopelessness about my economic future—a sorry substitute for a paycheck. As I scrounged for quarters to do laundry during the national coin shortage, I naively thought we were on the cusp of currency obsolescence.
One Friday night during that uncertain autumn, between bites of cheap pizza and swigs of cheaper beer, I heard a story from three Williams College grads, one of whom I was dating at the time. I’d tagged along for their reunion weekend in a Vermont airbnb I wasn’t paying for (and couldn’t have afforded), and found myself with nothing better to do than listen to men I didn’t know reminisce about their glory days in a college town I’ve never visited.
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