Quomodocumque ('93)

Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, whose blog is called Quomodocumque, graduated from Harvard in 1993. His graduating class's 15th anniversary is coming up soon, so he recently read the class reunion report from cover to cover. His analysis is very funny. Here are a couple of excerpts:

* If you are a woman who went to Harvard and you're not presently working outside the house, you call yourself a "stay-at-home mom" -- but if you're a woman married to a male alum and in the same situation, your husband might call you a "homemaker," or even, in one case, a "housewife."

* Triathlon is startlingly popular among my classmates. Alternative explanation: each and every person who completed a triathlon mentioned this fact in their entry. Actually, both might apply. Travel to non-western countries enjoys a similar status.

* Harvard does thousands of great things to its students and a few bad things, one of which is to promote the idea that the people eating Chickwiches on either side of us are fated to be the rulers of the world we'll live in as adults. Not true, it turns out. On first glance, I think the members of our class most notable to the world at large are the executive producer of the Daily Show and the minority whip of the Florida State Senate.

Quomodocumque, by the way, means "after whatever fashion."