Death:Expound.

This New York Times article on the examination system at All Soul's college, Oxford cheered me up rather a lot by reminding of some very happy times back at St. Andrews. My Scottish alma mater is not nearly as august as All Soul's, but the emphasis there was similarly on rooting out a students with a certain fluidity and originality of thought and writing rather than more American forms of academic rigor. Thus, the questions I see on the examinations mentioned in the article are quite familiar.

I spend some time thinking about whether my undergraduate education served me well. On one, overwhelming hand, the answer is "yes". Practically, I was able to get into the graduate and law schools I hoped to study at. More broadly, I feel like a well-educated person with a life-long interest in my undergraduate subject - history. Like many college graduate, some of my oldest and dearest friends are from the funny little town on the scottish coastline. And I love whiskey.

What's funny is that St. Andrew's failures are similar to my own. Am I as detail oriented as I ought to be, given where I work and what I do? Nope. Should I have been driven harder in college, rather than allowed to discover the wonders of discussing varieties of gingerbread with my friends? Probably so. But then I wouldn't have liked the experience so much.