Day 72

Here's something I thought I would never say: I wish I had paid closer attention to Plato's Republic in college.

For my Foundations of Higher Education class, at some point in the semester, each student has to teach for roughly 20 minutes on one of our class readings. On the first day of class, I decided to sign up to do my presentation in September so I could get my teaching out of the way early, and this Tuesday is my day. In addition to the assigned article, W. E. B. DuBois's "Talented Tenth," I have to find two other relevant articles and synthesize them into a coherent presentation about the assigned article. For one, I picked Booker T. Washington's "Industrial Education for the Negro" because "Talented Tenth" is seen as a reaction to Washington's essay, and for the other, I picked a book chapter from W. E. B. DuBois and The Souls of Black Folk called "The Talented Tenth Revisited," and I have been so pleased with my choice of day to present as well as the supplements I picked.

"The Talented Tenth Revisited" talks about how people might not see "The Talented Tenth" as a reaction to Booker T. Washington or an elitist proposal that would only embrace a small number of black people if they knew more about DuBois's background in philosophy. The author goes on to show how DuBois's idea parallels those in Plato's Republic, and it really was fascinating! Fortunately, there are plenty of long quotes from Republic as well as explanations of parallels between Plato and DuBois, but I would have liked to be able to rely on my own memory of Republic than to depend on the quotes the author selected. Alas.

I have had more fun and learned more information from this project than I ever expected. As a bonus, after Tuesday night, I will have this wonderful task behind me and can enjoy seeing what my classmates are learning from their teaching presentations.

I'm really liking school so far, but the volume of work has been an adjustment for sure. Working on this project has been a wonderful reminder that I am in the right place and that I am fortunate to have time to pursue something that excites me so much. I would like to get myself on a better schedule soon so that Sunday and Monday nights will not be as packed with reading. I haven't had a "normal" week since I started school, and we have been traveling every weekend since I started, so I guess I should just be happy to be swimming rather than sinking.

Something that made today great: Richard and I picked up Scooter from Camp Bow Wow, and she was so excited to see us!

Time I woke up: 10:44 am. I did roll over at 8:47 and consider getting out of bed, but it was a classic case of "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Alas.