Why is it that a spirit of wanderlust or adventure exists within each person? What is it about exploration and nature that fills the senses and creates a hunger to go and see the world? I have never thought seriously about the “lust” component of the word “wanderlust,” but that section of the word pops…
There is something tremendously stabilizing about a library. Really, I’ve never noticed it before, and it is incredibly strange, so much so that I feel as though it must mean something to me, must point me somewhere else, to some goal or career or future. Today I made the mistake(?) of wandering through classroom buildings…
The following is the transcript of a speech that I wrote and presented for Hillsdale College’s Edward Everett Oratory Contest this February. The contest’s topic for all competitors was “Individual Rights and the Common Good in American Education.” Speeches were to be ten minutes long and delivered entirely from memory. With this speech, I made…
At college or any level of school, the question, “What is an education?” merits serious consideration. After all, a school’s mission drives every facet of its functioning, from classroom design to core curriculum. However, such a question especially demands pondering given the changes in education that have occurred in the past two years under the…
With Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Easter arriving in the next several months, my thoughts have been straying to the action of God and religion in my life, as well as to my life in general. A convergence of literature in my various classes—all focusing on or mentioning confessions, testimonies, biographies, or journeys toward God—supports this…
The purpose of this post is to confirm and clarify the vision or direction of this blog and to hold me accountable to it. I have realized that my vision of my blog’s tone, style, and focus is somewhat murkier in my mind than I would like it to be. When I began this blog,…
“Call me Ishmael.” That highly recognizable three-word imperative begins Herman Melville’s iconic American epic, Moby Dick. While even a casual listener might remember the opening line, the first few sentences taken as a whole more completely express the ideas of the book, turning readers toward the ocean and making assertions about human nature: “Call me…
This past Thursday morning, my little town of Hillsdale was hit by a severe thunderstorm that caused a lot of damage in the town, including on my college’s campus. I spent part of Thursday morning driving around, just looking at the trees down and observing the effects of the power outage. This post springs from…
Sometimes, the commonplace objects of life provide useful analogies or descriptors for more complex, abstract concepts. Consider the following examples: Using physical coins, pebbles, blocks, etc. to teach children addition and subtraction. Comparing electrons and their movements to that of the planets in the solar system. Calling a person “like a cat” and bringing to…
“There’s no such thing as rabbit trails,” one of my English professors recently said at a department end-of-semester party. Such a phrase, at the time used casually and likely without any connection to metaphysics or more complicated imaginings, nevertheless hit me at the moment hard enough that I jotted down a record of it on…