Why do people seem to be getting #sick more often now?
For yet another year we are already seeing earlier and significantly higher #hospital#admissions for #respiratory#illness than pre-pandemic levels. Are there new mysterious #pathogens starting to attack us now? 🧵 1/
Labor Day weekend is always a time of both anticipation as well as trepidation.
Apart from the usual variables, COVID has brought us new generations of high school students who learned under very challenging different conditions from their predecessors.
I am delighted to report that when I met with entering students to discuss the common reading on Friday, they were very engaged, interested, and interesting. A good omen for the first-semester seminar I have to teach
As the new semester begins, we hope students will be eager & successful, but we know we may occasionally shake our heads at some decisions Admissions has made.
But as I like to say: it could always be worse.
Sometimes Admissions guesses wrong.
But we don't see the potentially disastrous candidates they do successfully weed out.
I gotta say, #English#proficiency requirements for #university#admissions are unreasonably inconsistent: exemption from #TOEFL et al. seems to vary greatly, from just a degree from an university with English instruction, to only having English as a mother tongue... Even region restrictions exist in between... C'mon, I lived my life mostly in English for so many years, is that not enough?!
Our society believes in all of these but gets less comfortable as the list goes on.
Each one, however, is linked. It's hard to believe in talent as something inherent to the individual and avoid implying unsavory things about genetic superiority.
The SCOTUS ruling is a fantastic opportunity to reconsider what is generally believed about merit.
Now that the U.S. #SupremeCourt has rejected affirmative action in college #admissions, questions arise about what direction the country is expected to go in terms of opportunity and a system that rewards achievement.