Labor Day weekend is always a time of both anticipation as well as trepidation.
Apart from the usual variables, COVID has brought us new generations of high school students who learned under very challenging different conditions from their predecessors.
I am delighted to report that when I met with entering students to discuss the common reading on Friday, they were very engaged, interested, and interesting. A good omen for the first-semester seminar I have to teach
Academic snapshot 2: Just back from the wedding of 1 of our daughter's friends. The father of the bride shared a treasured childhood drawing of her with him.
As a historian of science, however, he was compelled to point out that the position of the 2 figures violated the universal law of gravitation & the figures lacked the full articulation of human joints, as a result of which he was glad his daughter would be working in emergency medicine rather than as an orthopedic surgeon like her husband
As the new semester begins, we hope students will be eager & successful, but we know we may occasionally shake our heads at some decisions Admissions has made.
But as I like to say: it could always be worse.
Sometimes Admissions guesses wrong.
But we don't see the potentially disastrous candidates they do successfully weed out.
@rjblaskiewicz@histodons Ours are quite good, or at least humane (and, if anything, bend toward giving applicants the benefit of the doubt and looking for things beyond standard academic achievement), but yes, fits with what I have read
@CitizenWald@rjblaskiewicz@histodons Hampshire admissions staff were incredibly humane when I applied there years ago. It was probably the most personal and friendly interview experience I've ever had (including job interviews later), and when my early decision application was deferred they seemed to sincerely care when I wrote to them to explain how much I wanted to go there and how my record had improved since my junior year of high school.
@adamquinn@CitizenWald@histodons That is superb and they are to be applauded. It's how it should be. The people I have to work with should probably be demoted.
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