NCUR wrap-up

The last day or so of our Kentucky sojourn has been “full of passionate intensity” (though not “the worst,” so my apologies to Yeats for mangling “The Second Coming”). Unfortunately, my photo of the twelve-person semi-drunken rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” which was performed during last night’s van ride from dinner to the hotel did not turn out, so I’ll leave the details to your imagination.

At the end of this trip, however, one of the things that has really struck me is what good colleagues our Macaulay students have been. They’ve actively listened and responded not only to one another, but to all of the other participants in their sessions, in ways that have proven very interesting to observe.

Listening to a paper on modern Italian literature.

All of our students created great supporting materials, for example, using PowerPoint, Prezi, or their posters to convey research information in an engaging manner. But this wasn’t always the case in their panels–a number of other presenters committed the “cardinal sin” of reading a paper aloud for fifteen minutes. And we all saw how much harder it was to follow an argument or realize a topic’s intellectual potential when presenting that way, for sure, but even in that context, I thought our team asked smart questions and engaged in a respectful way with the content shared by such presenters.

I think we are all (Drew and I especially) ready to get back to New York, as this has in many ways been a whirlwind trip for us. We’re a tired bunch. But it has been an unreservedly successful experience for all of our students, and we’ve done Macaulay proud in our time in Kentucky.

We’re ready to come home now.