As the poet Gail Wronsky once wrote,
The Spanish dancer said, "This is your last day."
"But," she said, "it is not your very last day."
[I invite the readers of the Store to contemplate the pretty much all-purpose utility of the above lines, which are contained in Ms. Wronsky's creative dissertation at the University of Utah from many years ago.]
Today is the last day of classes. I find myself feeling nostalgic for the class, choosing to remember the challenging, engaging, scintillating time we spent together. This nostalgia (dare I call it love?) for the class leads me to fend off a tear, sometimes not quite successfully, to write comments on the students' final projects and e-mail the comments to the students, as if the students care about my comments when the semester's over. Maybe they do. Anyway, I will miss my students from this semester. [Note: the photo above is of actual students on the actual last day of class, taken with my own actual digital camera.]
Today, twenty-five years ago John Lennon was killed. Click here to read John Lennon's FBI file, or you can check out this weird project that aims to recreate John Lennon's personality by programming an Artificial Intelligence engine with his words and thoughts. Alternatively, you could just listen to an old Lennon recording. Walls and Bridges is a personal favorite.
Hey, we were like in-sync. I love the photo. I was wishing I had my camera in my Humanities class as they did the last peer review on their final paper. It was a great moment I wanted to capture: I wasn't needed, few even seemed aware I was there, students were really engaged with their work without any prodding (at least on this day) from me.
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