Wrong Scare

JAMES WRIGHT, now the acting president, is a history professor of great awe and power. I remember being overwhelmed with reading assignments one winter term; the avalanche was so great that I could tell in the first week that it was too much to handle. So, having a surfeit of history courses anyhow, I decided to drop Professor Wright's offering and pick up something else. He asked me why. I told him the truth. He told me he designed the course "to scare away students. But," he added, "I didn't think I'd scare away the good ones."

He had me. I took the course—nineteenth-century American politics—and I draw upon what I learned that winter, and not only about politics, nearly every day.