Notes To Remember This Summer

I just spoke with the mother of a student who recently transferred from St. Andrew's towards the end of this school year. She was worried - at St. Andrew's she always had plenty of homework to do - about the academic quality of Murrah, given that her daughter seemed never to be studying for anything and was playing down to a much diminished minimum standard in most classes. I was flattered, however, to learn that the student had actually been complaining about the fact that I give quizzes and homework every night. This came as a shock, since I had always assumed that my classes probably weren't as rigorous as those of a 'normal' Latin class elsewhere. It turns out that in some ways I've been far more rigorous than I realized. It's a funny feeling, knowing that I've spread myself way too thin this year and didn't do nearly all I could for my students, that I'm receiving all these flattering remarks on my way out the door. I'm always hard on myself, so to hear from others that I've gone way above and beyond the call of duty puts me in an awkward mental state. Hooray again for Catholic guilt and self-deprecation!

On a related note, I've decided to study the allegory of the cave with all my students to end the school year as a sort of swan song to cap these last two years off appropriately. If I can leave these students with one lasting impression or moral imperative it would be to climb as far out of that cave as possible and lead the examined life and blah blah blah. I'm pouring my heart into it, and to my surprise, one of my classes today actually applauded my performance, they were so enraptured by my whirlwind of thought and delivery. I was stunned. And so again, I must remind myself to consciously stay humble.

The first of the following links will bring you to an article written about my quiz team that appeared on the Ole Miss NewsDesk. I'm told that the story should be picked up by the Clarion-Ledger and that it's being pitched nationally, whatever that means. Awesome. The second link brings you to one of my Facebook photo albums, to which I've just added a snapshot picture of the Ole Miss homepage that has the article and my picture as the featured news article. I hope I get another fifteen minutes someday...

http://www.olemiss.edu/cgi-bin/news2000/display.pl?id=6149&mode=full

http://nd.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044621&l=97dde&id=5601686