Erin fills in.

It's Philip's turn to post, but he's at a wedding in Ohio, and I know that our faithful readers are staying up at night, worried about our lives, so I'll fill in. ;)

We started our seven and a half days of orientation last Monday. Along with normal things like meetings on the mission of the schools, health insurance, etc., we did a seminar each day. The theory is that the faculty must first embody a high intellectual culture--continuously seeking truth and beauty-and then they invite the students to join in that culture. The very first thing we did at the GP (our school) new-faculty orientation was a seminar on Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." It was delightful; everyone had thoughtful comments, and the atmosphere was sincere and polite. We did four more seminars before orientation was over; Plato's Meno, the introduction to Mortimer Addler's The Paedeia Program, and Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge" at the GH (the network of charter schools) new-faculty orientation and then Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" at the GP all-faculty orientation. Each school continues the faculty seminars throughout the year, and our headmaster chose Greek tragedies, for which I am grateful, since I have very little exposure to them and am eager to understand them better.

Philip and I are also very attached to the GP faculty. I really don't think I'm biased when I say we have the best faculty. Our headmaster interviews very aggressively, and I think he gets the best of the GH applicants. There's one other Hillsdale grad at GP (five Hillsdale grads total in the GH network), and oddly enough, I'd never met him before I came here, but he's really wonderful. Then there are our two downstairs neighbors, two Saint John's masters program students who are also wonderful. They are very kind and very serious students. The rest are all really great (I'm not very good with adjectives tonight), too; it makes leaving Hillsdale's company much easier.

So now we've had the first three days of school: a half-day of new student orientation, a half day of classes, and a full day of classes. It's absolutely exhausting! On Thursday, I came home from the half day and slept for three hours straight. Yesterday, Friday, we went to our faculty party after school, then I came home around 8 and promptly fell asleep on the couch at 10 and slept until 10 this morning. But other than the fatigue, all is well, despite the fact that the first question my students asked me was, "How old are you?" ;) I will save other news of our first days for Philip.