When I return home to America and people ask me why I went to college in Ireland, I usually reply with my go-to: “Mostly just to break the ice in conversations like this one.”
Tonight, I don’t have that problem. What I do have is immense difficulty tying my new Trinity-branded bow tie in the men’s room of New York City’s oldest and most prestigious yacht club. Apparently the collective wisdom of three 22-year-olds is enough to earn a BESS degree but not enough to follow nine simple steps for folding a small piece of patterned fabric.
Back upstairs, untied bow tie firmly in pocket, I return to the event at hand. The New York Trinity Ball is far removed, in every sense of the word, from the one you read about in that Vice article or maybe even attended. Tickets start at $150 for the night – and the website is very clear that this price only applies to “recent graduates” who need a subsidised ticket. A full-price ticket goes for $250. Again, this is for a single night, with not even a Stormzy to be found. The real generous souls shell out $3,000 for an entire table of 10 which, you’ll notice, is actually a mark-up on the individual ticket price.
A full-price ticket goes for $250. Again, this is for a single night, with not even a Stormzy to be found.
The purpose of the night, according to the organisers at the Greater New York TCD Alumni Association, is to “bring alumni of all ages and stages in their careers together for social and cultural events and to strengthen relations between alumni, the College and current students.” The group does not actually fundraise for Trinity, but rather aims to be financially self-sufficient so as not to divert funds from current students.
A quick scan of the university’s alumni page reveals that these types of events are actually quite common. The past few months have featured alumni receptions in Seoul, Rio de Janeiro and Copenhagen, and on April 23rd London hosted its own version of the alumni Trinity Ball. Among Irish universities, these types of annual events seem fairly unique in their regularity and geographic scope. The calendar of UCD alumni events suggests that they rarely, if ever, host events targeted at graduates who are living abroad. As a result, many Trinity students may not realise the extent of the offerings available to them once they graduate. The alumni networks do their best to proactively spread the word, but it helps to know exactly what you’re missing out on.
In this case, I find myself in a room covered floor-to-ceiling with model boats, paintings of boats, and architecture meant to replicate the exact feeling of being on a boat. At 7:30pm on a Saturday in Midtown Manhattan, my friends and I exist in a weird purgatory between helpless college students and functioning members of society. At the table of “young” graduates, we share dinner conversation with a nanophysicist (engaged to a lawyer, no less), a film producer and a UN employee, none of whom are yet close to looking or being 30. At least our table is named after the Long Room Hub, while our less fortunate neighbours dine at “The Buttery”.
At 7:30pm on a Saturday in Midtown Manhattan, I exist in a weird purgatory between helpless college student and functioning member of society.
You expect a degree of self-selectivity at an event like this. This is a party populated by the types of people able and willing to pay $150 or more for a single night of black-tie networking. Still, I can’t easily forget the feeling of having a person with the same generic twenty-something look as myself introduce me to their “husband” or “wife” or the dreaded “fiancé”. I envy these people and their real lives, but I feel equally incapable of being them.
Yet I know I must be an important person when the Provost himself, Dr Patrick Prendergast, takes the mic to thank us all for coming and to catch us up on all the shiny and expensive new projects happening back at Trinity. He makes sure to mention the €70 million Trinity Business School, funded primarily by wealthy donors, as well as other capital projects like the Oisín House redevelopment.
It’s almost taken for granted that American universities engage in this kind of shameless, incessant fundraising, but until quite recently it hasn’t seemed necessary or desirable for Irish universities. Like it or not, convincing the types of people gathered in this room that they should give more money to the College will continue to be a major part of the Provost’s job until an Irish government decides if and how higher education will be properly funded.
The three-course dinner passes quickly with good conversation and plenty of wine, and soon we find ourselves at the Pig ‘N Whistle bar on 36th Street (one of four in Manhattan, I’m told). Here, a similar dichotomy emerges between the young and old, or more accurately between the haves and the have-nots. At this afterparty, among our new Trinity friends, buying drinks becomes a point of pride. The investment bankers and consultants and lawyers, mostly Irish expats, all happily share their years of wisdom along with their generous bar tabs. I still have that dangerous college habit of never turning down a free drink, but I also realise that my inability to buy rounds for 10 strangers at a time is a sign that I haven’t quite “made it” yet.
I envy these people and their real lives, but I feel equally incapable of being them.
The advice is particularly welcome coming from people who have already navigated the wonderfully unique world of Trinity. At the moment, I haven’t even received my 4th-year results and yet I’m only a month away from starting a career in DC policy research. Someone is going to pay me (not much) to do research and form opinions about American national politics. It’s comforting to hear, from people who have apparently survived the transition to adulthood, that doing something you love is always going to be the better career move in the long-term. Granted, it helps if the thing that you love to do also pays well, but money isn’t going to make you happy or successful at something you hate. I also feel slightly better about my pending results when I realise that none of these people, who are old enough to hire me for a real-person job, care whether I end up with a 1st or barely scratching out a 2.1.
At the end of the night, on the subway back to Brooklyn, we decide to get off a few stops early for a late-night snack. But this is no greasy kebab or 3am McDonald’s run. This is New York, the only city in the world where a single slice of artichoke pizza can be the tastiest thing I’ve eaten in months.
