Brad Alger:  

I was accepted by Colby College in 1963. In 1964, after my RLHS senior grades were sent in, I was rejected by Colby College. Later that summer I was accepted into some school in New Hampshire, the name of which escapes me. I went there for 6 weeks, dropped out, and joined the Marine Corps. I never went to Vietnam, a fact about which I was ashamed. Now I am just ashamed to feel relieved. I was mustered out in San Francisco, and for a year or so lived in Haight-Ashbury doing odd jobs - mainly washing dishes in restaurants. I spent one autumn as a migrant worker in the Yakima valley in Washington harvesting hops, potatoes, and apples. I rode freight trains with other lost souls and lived alone in a cottage in Mendocino that winter learning that I was not cut out to be a writer. I returned to San Francisco and went to City College. Having no friends, plans, or prospects, I was extremely focused and studied in a kind of frenzy with nothing in particular in mind. But I did well, got into the University of California at Berkeley, and kept studying. Tuition then was dirt cheap, and I wandered from philosophy to psychology to physiology; the brain seemed more interesting than actual people, so I had decided to study that, when I met a girl. She was beautiful, smart, and funny; brilliant and assertive, but intellectually laid back in the way that natural math majors can be. We met in a biology class and I admired the way she wore miniskirts. She got interested in medicine and applied to a few California schools and Harvard. When she was accepted everywhere, it created a crisis: it was clear (to me anyway) that she should go east, but I needed another year to finish majors in psychology and physiology. Letting her and her miniskirts go to Boston alone was not going to work in my favor, so I dropped physiology and quickly finished up in psych. My applications to Boston schools were accepted by some, including Harvard, so we moved to Cambridge and I went there. We were married in 1973 (although we count from 1971). Lindsay finished her MD in 1976 and I got my PhD in 1977. (She did her medical internship in the hospital in Cambridge where I was born. Is that possibly interesting to anyone but me?) From 1977-1981 we were at the University of California, San Francisco where she did a residency in ob/gyn and I did a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology and physiology. In 1981 we joined the faculty of the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore, where we are professors of ob/gyn and physiology/neuroscience. Lindsay specializes in maternal/fetal medicine and high-risk obstetrics; I am an electrophysiologist who studies neuronal communication in the hippocampus. Our daughter was born in 1980 and our son in 1983; oddly enough they are both now school teachers. Justine, with degrees from Tufts and Towson Universities, lives in Baltimore; Jordan got a couple of degrees from Rice and is still in Houston. Justine is getting married in June and so we are way into that at the moment. If this qualifies as a story, it's mine. I'd be interested to hear yours. December 24, 2013 Three years ago my daughter Justine was about to get married and she did, and this past September gave birth to her second boy, and Lindsay's and my third grandson. When not having babies, Justine is teaching second grade at a beautiful co-ed private school a couple of miles away. Her husband is the new STEM (Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics) teacher for his school district, and they and their eldest (2 yrs 10 mos) live close by. Our son Jordan has gotten married, and has a 1.5 mo old son of his own. At the moment, he and his family also live in Baltimore; his wife is an ESL teacher who has recently taken a position at Johns Hopkins business school. After suddenly realizing that life as a teacher was not for him, Jordy went to Boston to do a post-baccalaureate year at Tufts and apply to medical schools - he is now a 3rd year med student at the University of Maryland, doing clinical rotations and rapidly gaining admiration for his mother's ability to juggle career and family. I have taken up race-walking because the one - one - benefit of getting older is that you really do not have to care about what others think. I would not try to disabuse anyone of whatever preconceptions about it that you might have - from the right perspective, it is no doubt as silly-looking as people say it is - on the plus side, it is arduous, technically tricky, and as much of a cardio workout as you like. And it doesn't hurt your knees. Done properly (I am still learning) it feels rather graceful, and graceful is not an everyday kind of feeling any more. So that's good too. I quit doing triathlons 11 years ago because of my knees; I still bike and swim a couple of times a week. The main challenge now is getting used to the fact that maximal efforts are rewarded with progressively slower times per distance covered. Supposed to be practicing acceptance and gratitude, I know, but it doesn't come naturally. At work, Lindsay is still contemplating her next move, while I am entering the end game and trying to see how to play it out, as if it mattered. After 32 years I'll be shutting down my lab soon, and have withdrawn from almost all of my minimal teaching responsibilities ("Well, I won't be giving that lecture anymore!" - what can they do?). I've applied for Emeritus status (some wags insist that this should be pronounced with the accent on the 'i' as in a disease). Then what? The list is pretty extensive and everything has been put off for just about as long as it can be. I'm just sayin'. August 31. 2019 The family has grown a little, Justine now has 3 boys (8,6,1) and Jordy has a boy (7) and a girl (3). Justine is still teaching 2nd grade at a private school nearby but is thinking about administration. A few years ago she got into running, did a bunch of half-marathons and is now training for her first full marathon (the Marine Corps) this fall. ...Expand for more