Settling in here at Ole Miss wasn’t too much trouble at all, but my first day was really tiring. I woke up at 2:30 EST on Wednesday at my mother’s house in Bath to get to the airport in Rochester in time for my flight at 6:10. At Rochester I was held up a little bit at the counter because my bag was overweight and oversized according to the new restrictions. (Note to self, and to all readers: pack two smaller bags and pay the advanced charge for the second bag, because it’s $20 cheaper with Airtran.) After removing all 900+ pages of Augustine’s City of God and Comenetz’s not-too-small book on the calculus, I managed to get it underweight, but I couldn’t do anything to correct the size. $30 saved, and $30 down the drain.
I flew from Rochester to Atlanta to Memphis, and was done flying by sometime after 9:00 CT, which was 10:00 EST. That was the beginning of my day. Molly Goldwasser, a second year in the Teacher Corps and intern previously, drove down to Memphis to pick me up along with my fellow intern, Latisha “Tish” Wilson of Amherst College. As soon as we got to Oxford, I had to drop off my bags, meet Ben, the MTC program manager, and very quickly drive myself back to Memphis in the university van. I went back to pick up Amanda McGinn and Christine Lyons, more fellow interns from Amherst. So we got back to Ole Miss a little after 3:00 PM. Factoring in the time zone change, I had been up for nearly fourteen hours traveling (and I only had about two hours of sleep the night before), and did not want to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. With much struggle I stayed awake until 8:00 PM and slept until 7:00 the next morning.
Thursday and Friday were the two orientation days for the team of interns, whom I have decided to call “the Elite Eight” despite all other opinion. The seven of us (missing one who will join us next week) bobbed around with Ben and Molly and some lovely people down here to get a feel for the Teacher Corps, Ole Miss, and the history of Mississippi, specifically but not exclusively related to education.
We just came out of a conversation with Dr. Mullins, a long-time item of Ole Miss formerly involved with such iconic education reformers as William Winter. He’s wonderful. His love for Mississippi is apparent and probably unshakable. Most of our talks were concerned with the education reform done during the 1980’s, when he worked with then-Governor William Winter, and he also spoke a great deal on the civil rights changes that have occurred over the past half-century. He claims that Mississippi has actually made the most progress of all southern States with regard to civil rights and education reform; Mississippi was the darkest of the Deep South, especially the Delta region; it has made the most progress, but it also had the farthest to go, and so it does appear to be so far behind. I hope to talk with him more throughout the summer.
I have another, more personal (?), post coming up soon. Stay tuned.
I flew from Rochester to Atlanta to Memphis, and was done flying by sometime after 9:00 CT, which was 10:00 EST. That was the beginning of my day. Molly Goldwasser, a second year in the Teacher Corps and intern previously, drove down to Memphis to pick me up along with my fellow intern, Latisha “Tish” Wilson of Amherst College. As soon as we got to Oxford, I had to drop off my bags, meet Ben, the MTC program manager, and very quickly drive myself back to Memphis in the university van. I went back to pick up Amanda McGinn and Christine Lyons, more fellow interns from Amherst. So we got back to Ole Miss a little after 3:00 PM. Factoring in the time zone change, I had been up for nearly fourteen hours traveling (and I only had about two hours of sleep the night before), and did not want to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. With much struggle I stayed awake until 8:00 PM and slept until 7:00 the next morning.
Thursday and Friday were the two orientation days for the team of interns, whom I have decided to call “the Elite Eight” despite all other opinion. The seven of us (missing one who will join us next week) bobbed around with Ben and Molly and some lovely people down here to get a feel for the Teacher Corps, Ole Miss, and the history of Mississippi, specifically but not exclusively related to education.
We just came out of a conversation with Dr. Mullins, a long-time item of Ole Miss formerly involved with such iconic education reformers as William Winter. He’s wonderful. His love for Mississippi is apparent and probably unshakable. Most of our talks were concerned with the education reform done during the 1980’s, when he worked with then-Governor William Winter, and he also spoke a great deal on the civil rights changes that have occurred over the past half-century. He claims that Mississippi has actually made the most progress of all southern States with regard to civil rights and education reform; Mississippi was the darkest of the Deep South, especially the Delta region; it has made the most progress, but it also had the farthest to go, and so it does appear to be so far behind. I hope to talk with him more throughout the summer.
I have another, more personal (?), post coming up soon. Stay tuned.
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