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Hi Cardinals. This is your new class secretary, Arthur Chen. Here are some exciting updates from your dear classmates:

Aldrean Alogon writes: “I want to say ‘hi’ to everybody in our class. Ashley Tuen and I are rooming together in the big city, and we miss the Class of 2023 so much. It’s nice that Wes built very strong connections, and we still hang out very frequently with our college besties. Can’t wait to see everybody sometime soon!”

From Aidan Jones: “I recently joined my thesis lab, as I started my second year as a Columbia University PhD student.”

From Elizabeth Rowe: “I spent the last year teaching English in Madrid, Spain. Now I am starting law school back in my hometown at UT Austin. Hook ’em!”

From Kelly Fenton-Samuels: “After graduating with BA degrees in chemistry and earth and environmental sciences, I stayed at Wesleyan for an additional year to complete an MA degree in earth and environmental sciences. My master’s thesis focused on ice, ocean, and climate interactions in Antarctica during the Plio-Pleistocene Transition, approximately 2.6 million years ago. This period marked the transformation from a world warmer than today to one with continental-scale ice sheets in both hemispheres. I am continuing this research within a PhD program at Columbia University and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, furthering my passion for exploring Earth’s natural laboratory and enhancing scientific understanding of climate change.” So exciting to learn about Kelly’s research; not going to lie, that sounds pretty cool (pun unintended!).

And from the very first friend that I made at Wesleyan, Quentin Rollet writes: “I just spent one year in Los Angeles working on several film sets and at a production company called Iconoclast. I even got to make my own short film. In the process, I realized that my Wesleyan film thesis was a piece of cake compared to the ruthless Hollywood money machine. Although I didn’t like the city that much, I met a lot of cool people there. 
            “I also got to travel a lot recently—finally put my three years of Japanese to practice in Japan—and followed the filmmaker Wong Kar Wai’s footsteps in Hong Kong, where I met other Wes alumni. Now I’ll settle back in Paris and probably make more movies. Let me know if you’re visiting!” Visiting Quentin in Paris last summer, I can vouch that he will feed you a lot and different kinds of cheese every day!

Lastly, from me (Arthur): I am currently on a working holiday in Australia. Originally, I planned to find work in farming or hospitality to experience different jobs and meet new people, but I ended up as a research assistant at the University of Melbourne, which was quite unexpected—just like how unpredictable life can be after graduating! But I become more comfortable with embracing precarity now. Being on a college campus again reminds me of my time at Wesleyan, so whenever I work on student film sets, I wear my Wesleyan “Dad” hat to show my Cardinal pride. Haha!

Thank you “heaps” for reading our class notes! Please send me updates throughout the year to share with our classmates. I can be reached at achen03@wesleyan.edu. Topics can range from personal and professional updates, memories, family news, traveling, mini-reunions, and more! It doesn’t have to be long, even a sentence or two will do. Feel free to provide photos too. Cheers! (I realized Australians don’t really say this….)

This is a crew photo from a single-take, 30-minute short film that Arthur (second from left in the back row, wearing his Wesleyan hat) worked on. “It was kind of disastrous—as you may see from my face—but we had fun.”

ARTHUR CHEN | achen03@wesleyan.edu