Sometimes it happens

Let's take just a moment to keep things in perspective here at the end of the term, amidst the crush of grading, the strange end-of-term service commitments, the influx of lousy weather and such. Today, I want - Monday that it is - to ask about what one good moment in your recent academic life has been. Something specific - not just that you're employed or some-such.

For me, it's that as I was grading papers this weekend, asking my poor freshmen to venture their views on art and to offer me an example of something artistic that fits their definition, I had a student lay me out. It was the sort of thing that I had to immediately run to Google to check. How had they seen that? Who on Earth were they, a silly freshman, to like it?

They wrote it. They liked it. They had well-thought-out reasons.

Sometimes they're deeper than I give them credit for. Sometimes they surprise me.