school

A New Lacrosse Player

As of yesterday, we’ve officially added another sport to the family list. Tomas started things off with cross country, nordic, and track. Daniela followed in his footsteps until now, when she left track behind to jump over to the lacrosse team. Being on a team sport for the first time brings some different territory. For one thing, there’s much more in the way of unfamiliar gear. Daniela spent a while Sunday getting her mouth guard squared away, and she wasn’t exactly a huge fan of it once it was ready. (She came upstairs with it in and said, smiling, “I

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How Valuable is College?

I read a very interesting piece in the New York Times today (“Americans are Losing Faith in the Value of College”), and it provided a fair bit of food for thought. Basically, it outlines how in the last decade, the importance people place on getting a college degree in America has plummeted. Some of this is because of ideologies (Republicans view college as far too liberal), but a whole lot of it is due to the fact that college is just so expensive in this country. Even at a small in-state university like mine, tuition runs around $10,000/year. That’s $40,000

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Welcome to College Remarks

Later today, I’ve been asked to give a very brief speech to the new freshmen coming to campus, as Staff Senate President. Never let a good speech go to waste, I say. Especially when I need something to blog about. So here you go: a sneak peek before I even give it. Hello! On behalf of the staff members here at UMF, I’m happy to welcome you to campus. As you’ve been getting ready to come to Farmington, you might have had a number of thoughts going through your mind. What will your classes be like? Will you get along

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Back to School: 2022 Edition

And they’re off! MC and Daniela started school today, heading into fourth grade and ninth grade, respectively. (Denisa also started her latest semester, though I have no idea how many this makes for her.) It feels like I’ve written so many of these over the years, that writing new blog posts about the first day of school no longer really have much for me to say. Writing that, part of me feels bad for MC. By the time she’s going through all her “firsts,” they’re “thirds” for Denisa and me. That does tend to take away some of the shine

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On Music Composition

My Bach class is finished now, and I have to say how much I enjoyed it. Yes, it made my Tuesdays insanely busy for five weeks in a row, but I got to learn about things I didn’t know a whole lot about previous to the course, and learning is something I really like. In addition, it turns out that the lab part of the class was focused on composition. I’ll be honest: in the lead up to the class, I didn’t really pay any attention to what it was going to be about other than Bach. I like Bach.

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