How I spent my weekend

Leading the group in a rousing chorus of the Engineering Hymn.
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This weekend, I returned to Crazy Go Nuts University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada for the 25th reunion of what should have been my graduating class — the Applied Science (the university’s term for engineering) class of 1991, a.k.a. Science ’91. I took a little longer than I’d intended to, graduating with a computer science degree in 1994, but with a string of accomplishments, skills, and experiences that would’ve made heroic perma-students like Van Wilder or Animal House’s John “Bluto” Blutarsky green with envy.

Chief among the many skills that Crazy Go Nuts University engineering students have is the ability to get things done. While many other graduating classes were content to simply show up for homecoming, Science ’91 organized their own events, fired up the Facebook group to keep everyone up-to-date, made our own banner for the parade, and had caps and t-shirts made. The parade banner and t-shirt featured Spot, the Science ’91 mascot that I designed when the upper-year students gave us freshmen the onerous duty of repainting the engineering pub one hungover Sunday morning (we repainted the pub, and improved the paint job with a huge mural featuring Spot).

Here’s the artwork that I made for the t-shirt and parade banner, prior to my erasing the penciling:

Spot, the Science ’91 mascot.
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We got the crowd going at the Saturday morning pep rally, and with our fantastic banner, exuberant spirit, and the assistance of the accordion, got a feature interview on local news:

Getting interviewed by CKWS.
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Here’s the video of the interview. You can see Anitra in it, too, which makes this her first Canadian television appearance!

With the pep rally done, we made our march to the game and had a grand old time:

Photo by Anitra Pavka.
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I had a grand old time at homecoming, and as I’ve said before: it’s not the buildings and campus that make a school (although we’ve got nice ones), but the people, relationships, and experiences. The class of Science ’91 is a collection of amazing, wonderful folks, and I’m proud and pleased to know them and to have the count me among their number. My thanks to my classmates, and especially the organizers, for putting together a fantastic homecoming weekend!