In nova fert animus

I don’t have the time to develop this thought right now, but I think about it regularly. There are unanticipated consequences of going to a good school. Not a “good school,” which is good only because of highly publicized rankings, but a school, like Amherst, like many others, which is actually good—which actually does light a fire in it’s students. 

A friend sent me this article a few days ago. It’s about consulting and and investment banking and their ability to attract hoards of graduates from good schools:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/30/even-artichokes-have-doubts/

I am going to inquire at our own career center about the statistics of Amherst graduates that go into these fields, though I am expecting similar results (within 5%). 

Speaking of change, apparently the season has recently changed in Amherst. I just walked outside, and there was half an inch of fresh snow on my 4Runner. October 27th.

As I reflect on the state of my life, and the states of the lives I have lived, I recognize that until recently, I really did not believe Heraclitus when he renders his sense of the ever-changingness of life in his observation that one can (of course) never step into the same river twice. If I believed him, I don’t think I realized what was at stake in such an observation about the nature of things. I certainly didn’t realize that the class of things which were not rivers, and yet subject to the same mutability was not only endless, but intimately relevant to the daily unfolding of my life. 

Recently, I have slipped into a new period in my life where I feel, as more and more instances of substantial change present themselves, my confidence in the lastingness of things has become vulnerable to an experience of things’ passingness. My work, my thinking, my aspirations, my self—all of these have brought me to a river. Rapid and slow, merciful and brutal, lovely and foul with burgeoning of life. Predictable, incredible. 

Heraclitus, Ovid, and, of course, Sam Cooke. “I was born by the river….”