Alumni Magazines - Classic or Dud?

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Do you receive a magazine through the post from yr alma mater now and then? Is it any use at all?

― MarkH (MarkH), Sunday, 10 November 2002 14:57 (twenty-three years ago)

If you are a recent alumnus of UCL, your getting this mag depends in part on me, in that I wrote the programme that gets the details on departed students from one system to another. It is a dull mag, so not worth your trouble - that department is really there for fundraising purposes, and the mag is a way of maintaining contact and creating goodwill.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 10 November 2002 15:06 (twenty-three years ago)

My one from Bristol Uni is called Nonesuch and it's supposed to come out twice a year, spring and autumn. Whether it does or not I'm not so sure, I rarely bother to keep it for more than a few days before consigning it to the recycling bin. People I know are very rarely featured in it, which is prolly just as well, as I suspect that a fair few of my contemporaries are earning far more/being more successful than me and I don't partcularly want to put myself in a position when I end up resenting them, because I had a good time as a student and I don't want those memories tainted by anything. Quite a large proportion of Nonesuch seems to be reminiscences of ppl who were at Bristol Uni in the sixties or earlier, anyway and it always seems to be those ppl who go to the reunions that they advertise. I'm always amazed by the crystal clear memories they have of things that happened in their student days.

Nonesuch always has lots of info about the uni's latest building programmes, be they depts or new halls or whatever, which are of limited interest to me. As for famous grads in the news, I can only think of four, Dominic Diamond (a briefly famous presenter of a computer games show on Channel 4 called "Gamesmaster") Hugh Cornwell of the Stranglers, Paul Boateng and Sue Lawley.

― MarkH (MarkH), Sunday, 10 November 2002 15:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Dud when it contains an announcement of the death of your university best friend months before, you don't know anything about this when the magazine drops on the mat, etc.

Classic when it talks about getting news from Yoko Ono, Julianna Margulies, Guin Turner, Jane Alexander, Brian de Palma, Alice Walker, Bard Cole, Allan Gurganus, Joanne Woodward, Kyra Sedgwick, Cary Elwes, Lee Radziwill, Joan Juliet Buck or Ingrid Sischy. Sigourney Weaver doesn't write in, she hated it there.

― suzy (suzy), Sunday, 10 November 2002 15:17 (twenty-three years ago)

I get regular UCLA magazines, from both campus and alumni association (I'm a lifetime member). Haven't been really much use for me per se but they're fun for a flip through.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 10 November 2002 15:23 (twenty-three years ago)

Classic mostly because it'll show up with pictures of the people they've named to the school's Board of Governors - and it's often some shithead that I had classes with way back when. I went to a very small uni (Brandon University), so it's easy to remember everyone. The pictures of the former scruffs in their suits crack me up.

― Bryan (Bryan), Sunday, 10 November 2002 15:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, yeah, you also find out who the college sucks up to in your class because of huge, ridiculous amounts of wealth. That dim girl reading a book under a spreading oak on the cover of the prospectus? Fifteen years later, same girl in her own pearls, married to investment banker, doing the young trustees bit, horrible 'competent' photography.

― suzy (suzy), Sunday, 10 November 2002 15:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think TVU do one.

― jel -- (jel), Sunday, 10 November 2002 16:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Warwick do one, though I've just stopped getting what I got before (Warwick Network, of which my ex was once the cover star, despite being normal and poor), which was fairly dull, and instead I'm receiving something SO dull I can't remember what it's called.

They seem fairly irrelevant to me, except in the kind of situation Suzy mentioned. My memories of university are very much tied up with what *I* did there, so the dry news featured in these journals tends to mean very little.

― Mark C (Mark C), Sunday, 10 November 2002 17:31 (twenty-three years ago)

I get 'em and I chuck 'em. Same goes for the alumni fundraising letters.

― Tad (llamasfur), Sunday, 10 November 2002 18:21 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah I get mine, its of mild interest for all the friends popping out babies and tieing knots.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Sunday, 10 November 2002 20:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Haven't been really much use for me per se but they're fun for a flip through.

But its so much fun when you find out that the people you didn't get along with turn out to be bigger losers than you.

― brg30 (brg30), Sunday, 10 November 2002 21:06 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm looking forward to getting this year's school magazine cz it will say what universities everyone in my year went to, and I can go and stalk them (this = true).

― Graham (graham), Sunday, 10 November 2002 21:19 (twenty-three years ago)

i like mine because it's more like a real magazine than an alumni newsletter.
but i refuse to donate $$. it helps that i don't have any. some poor alumni representative from the school called recently asking if i would donate and i spent half an hour listing all my demands of all the things that they needed to change about the school before i'd give them a dime. (this included things like, 'give all campus funds to the humor magazine', 'get rid of the administration', etc.) she started apologizing profusely and took notes on what i was saying. hahah. oh yeah, then i mentioned i was in grad school and that i didn't have any money to give.

― geeta (geeta), Sunday, 10 November 2002 22:48 (twenty-three years ago)

I got an alumni magazine from St. John's College as promotional material. It had an article in the back about how graduates have trouble getting started in math and programming careers because they spent four years reading Euclid and Ptolemy and Newton. That way they don't have practice at solving problems really fast and they don't know much higher-level math, so they're at a disadvantage compared to people who went to normal colleges. That article helped me think about why I do (or don't, i'm undecided but that's a concern) want to go to St. John's. The magazine was kind of cutesy but I'm glad they publicly admit it's a problem.

― Maria (Maria), Monday, 11 November 2002 03:13 (twenty-three years ago)

dud. I don't think anyone famous and still alive went to either of mine. and the stories aren't about interesting research but dumb stuff about buildings and business

― isadora (isadora), Monday, 11 November 2002 03:18 (twenty-three years ago)

mag from elementary/middle school = sad because school used to be run by kindly hippies (school founded as first integrated school in VA), and is now too posh.
mag from high school = all the people I hated are doing quite well mag from college = never mentions anyone I knew

these magazines end up in the bin quite quickly, though I do read them, and, with regards to my high school mag, it is amusing to see that parents of former classmates are still giving the school money. I just want to say to these people "look, your illeterate son/daughter has already graduated, so there is no need for you to try and make them look better by giving money/kissing ass."

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 11 November 2002 03:54 (twenty-three years ago)

two years pass...

Revive!

The best thing about moving country was that I stopped getting the stupid magazines and the requests for donations from my Alma Mater (hah!) I just made the mistake of googling it (don't ask, I was looking for excuses to destroy the state of Connecticut and they have this online alumni association signup thing.

It might be good for a laff, though to be honest, there's only one person I would even want to hear from, maybe two.

Though their online signup form has the options:

Select Your Feelings Toward ****:
1. I fondly remember my days
2. Some good, some bad
3. They were difficult years

and no option for I STILL FANTASISE ABOUT BLOWING THE PLACE UP!!!

Should I do it, or will they only pester me for money?

― The Brocade Fire (kate), Monday, 19 September 2005 12:16 (twenty years ago)

I guarantee they will pester you for money. Up to you whether you think there is anything more to get from it.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 19 September 2005 12:21 (twenty years ago)

What I really want is schadenfreude about their miserable little trustafarian lives. Which I probably won't get. (I mean, I'd love to know how many wives my first crush has been through by now.)

― The Brocade Fire (kate), Monday, 19 September 2005 12:22 (twenty years ago)

They will definitely pester you for money. You should do it anyway.

My university has taken to PHONING UP to ask for money - god only knows where they got my number from. They're very pushy about it too.

(other Edinburgh grads: do they do this to you too?)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 19 September 2005 12:23 (twenty years ago)

This isn't even a college, or even come to think of it a Prep school. A pre-prep "country school" or whatever. It's possibly the school I went to for the longest, though.

What should I put for my occupation? Banking? Computers? Music/Recording Industry?

No, I'm feeling icky even thinking about it and there's probably no way to delete it if I signed up.

― The Brocade Fire (kate), Monday, 19 September 2005 12:27 (twenty years ago)

DUD, increasingly, because every entry in the Class Notes section of the Washington College Magazine reads the same: ultra-generic bullshit about how somebody met up with somebody else from some school to got bar-hopping or visit Disneyland or backpack across Europe, or how so-and-so is cooling heels between jobs (translation: I'm a bum!), or just finishing off a graduate program in comparative whatever, or just got promoted to V.P. of Marketing for whatever, and so on and so on until I just wanna kill everyone because who cares, REALLY? I find myself wondering, "what possessed me to read this garbage? The people I care about I talk to, and what they're up to is not only more interesting but I wanna hear about it."

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Monday, 19 September 2005 14:35 (twenty years ago)

bonus: your entry contains your email so interested parties can "catch up"

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Monday, 19 September 2005 14:48 (twenty years ago)

Guilty pleasure, though of infinitely less entertainment value than the Sunday Styles wedding announcements. They should really spin those off into their own paper. I could read them all day long.

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 01:44 (twenty years ago)

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