I'm not sure when it happened, but one day I realized I had crossed an invisible threshold: I had stopped being impressed with myself because I went to Stanford.
To be sure, in those first few years after leaving the Farm, Stanford was a salient part of my identity. When I searched for my first job, I proudly listed my degree high up on my résumé. I put a Stanford decal on my first car, a rusted-out station wagon where passengers could watch the road through a hole in the floor. When I went camping, I brought along a Stanford pennant to fly from my tent pole: Raccoons who contemplated a raid on my gorp were warned that they would be trifling with a Stanford man.
When I finally got that first job, my co-workers were fresh out of college, too. It was pretty natural that we all asked each other, "Where did you go to school?" How gratifying it was as I answered with a modest blush. Their eyebrows arched as my colleagues silently said to themselves, "They let you in?"
But somehow, over time, my Stanford spirit seeped away.
Maybe it was leaving the land of palm trees and the sunny Pac-10 and moving back to snowdrifts and the stolid Big Ten. Or maybe it was how the years clicked by and other experiences piled up to compete with memories of Stanford. All the ways that college changed my life lost the sharpness they once had. Stanford did play a role in who I was, but increasingly that person was being shaped by work and marriage and fatherhood and the everything else of life. Years—OK, decades—later, where I went to college increasingly seemed about as relevant as what I wore to my first job interview.
But as I stopped being impressed with myself as a Stanford alum, I began to be impressed by parents whose kids got into Stanford.
It probably started with a co-worker who knew where I went to school. When his daughter got into Stanford, his face glowed when we talked—him with greater enthusiasm than mine—about what a fabulous place it was. He practically enjoyed writing those tuition checks.
And who could blame him? Stanford's reputation as a nurturer of success was enjoying an unchecked rise as graduates like Page and Brin joined the legends of Hewlett and Packard. These days no Stanford graduate is asked what it was like to go to school in Connecticut.
Admissions to Stanford have become dizzyingly competitive. I could never get in today. (Another reason to be less impressed with myself!) Who were these superparents who were rearing Stanford-worthy wunderkinder?
When my daughter started looking at colleges, she was convinced she didn't have much of a chance. She only applied because I asked her to. "Look, I won't be disappointed if you don't get admitted," I told her. "But I want you to at least give it a shot." I meant it, too, in the same way that I told her it was OK for her to give up junior high soccer so long as she at least gave it a try.
We were both a bit unprepared when Robin was admitted to the Class of 2013.
Suddenly I found myself paying a lot more attention to the alumni association emails. I went to an alumni function held in my town, a happy hour. (What nice people, and yet we hardly talked about Stanford.)
At Pro Fro weekend, I made sure my daughter jumped in the air with me as the band played "All Right Now." "Look, I know the other parents and Pro Fros aren't doing it, but I want you to at least give it a try," I told her.
When we got home, I took the new Stanford decal I had bought in the bookstore and stuck it on my car, another station wagon, but without a hole in the floor. Now I'm thinking about visiting Robin. Wouldn't it be fun to go to the Big Game? And who does have that Axe now?
RICHARD CHIN, '81, is a journalist in St. Paul, Minn. Cal has the Axe until Nov. 21.
