In correspondence with a former student about their career, they offered this note of thanks to me:
Please know that I divide life (in an intellectual dimension, at the least) to before and after studying X with you.
Wow. Emotional gold for a teacher: you did good things that helped change someone’s life.
I haven’t taught for a dozen years now, and have no contact with Stanford students, indeed hardly any contact with my colleagues. But I continue posting my highly personal intellectual entertainments, aiming for one a day, to show that (like Mary Queen of Scots) I’m Not Dead Yet; that gives me pleasure and provides some small connection to the rest of the world during my repeated isolations.
Still, it’s nice to have some evidence, every so often, that I’ve done good.
Meanwhile, I’m working on a silly photo for the 60th reunion of my Princeton class — wearing a LXII class cap (provided by the class for this purpose), plus (as per instructions) “some orange and black” (and, because it’s me, a bit of rainbow Pride). Stay tuned for the visual.
And we’re having a couple days of record heat, predicted to plummet by 20F tomorrow, to normal for this time of the year. Plus, of course, the drought.
In recompense, the first of the flowering fruit trees burst into bloom some days ago, just a week after the last of the autumn leaves got raked up. Heady stuff.
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