first days

Despite the franticness, the first days of teaching at the beginning of a new academic year are always so full of promise and hope. Like so many other things in life: trust, friendship, love.

As I walk among the sunny effervescence of the new students, I repeat to myself this long-standing aspiration and motto of mine, in the hope that some of them may listen and remember:


"If one of my students should one day rear children in a better way....

 --Allen Fisher, from Brixton Fractals in Gravity.

... it will have been worth it.

This, and this alone,  is what makes being here less insufferable. Sticking to the essentials, beyond all the disappointments and wrongs suffered.


First days, first things.