Jeopardy???

So I took the College Jeopardy test today. All and all, I think I did well.

Two things: I think it went well, but I'm definitely going to have to refresh my knowledge of poetry, Latin and roman culture, contemporary music (read: rap) and literature. I was so close to typing in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, but I ran out of time!

Assuming if you answer all the questions, it's still random as to whether or not you'll be on. For shame. A good article on how to break into Jeopardy! is this article.

God willing, I'll bust in by senior year.

CMC John Roth on Forgiveness

Professor John Roth, the soul of CMC and of its Holocaust program, gave a speech at DePauw where he's a visiting professor this academic year, on the nature of forgiveness.

"To forgive means to be merciful, to pardon an offense or an offender, to give up a claim against another individual, to set aside a debt, to relinquish anger or resentment however justifiable those feeling may be, to free a person from the burden of guilt," Roth told his audience. "Thus, forgiveness is what we may call afterward. It has that status partly because of the holocaust and other human catastrophes."

I wonder sometimes if forgiveness must necessarily come afterwards. Might there be preemptive forgiveness in which we acknowledge the shortcomings of others before they fail us?

Giving Back to CMC With Your Word and Your Dollar

With the 200 million dollar grant we're getting from Robert Day, I've been thinking a lot about how our school will join that privileged few, household-name liberal arts college category and what that means for the school.

Ben Casnocha, a fellow student and guy with some real world experience, gave me this pearl of student-centered evangelism: spread the word.

Mission for CMC students: Go out and get ten people who have never heard of Claremont McKenna to apply.

As an East Coast prep school kid, I'm trying to do my part. (Hopefully, if this blog gets read, I'll have done my fair share.) But on a more personal level, the model of Choate School in Connecticut (later stolen by J.F.K.) was "ask not what you can do for yourself, ask what you can do for your school." Helping get your school's name out helps your degree gain value.

Day put it best: "I've been very successful and want to put it back in the system." Good on you, Mr. Day.