As of noon today, only the Class of 2015 remains on campus. It seems like yesterday we gathered for new student registration and headed into the woods for Wilderness Orientation. 

The awards season. It arrives every year with graduation, and on Monday we moved through our underclass awards. In a week, many more will be handed out. So much goes into wrangling the names of the winners, and each year I am reminded that the only award that’s easy to determine is one calculated by GPA: do the math, pick the winner. Simple. But do the numbers ever tell the whole story? No. Do they tell the story of character and grit, of intrinsic drive? Sometimes. Maybe. Not always. 

We get used to so much, adapting to subtle shifts in our environment without even knowing it. A week ago, spring slipped into summer-like heat and humidity, and the community shifted into rhythms we could not have imagined in February. Students drifted down to the Blackwater to swim, windows were thrown open in dorms, and flip-flop days returned. We adjust, we acclimatize.

Where do the dark ribbons of genius originate? Waking up in the morning, snippets of dreams tease us back into sleep’s adventures. How did they get there? Where do they originate? We traverse lands we have never been to, encounter friends and strangers, and navigate architectural structures of M.C. Escher complexity. We see what we never thought was possible, experience wholesale changes in the laws of physics. What wellspring of the mind creates such playgrounds? And how do we value it in our everyday life?

Baltimore and courage have been on my mind this week. I can’t shake the story of Freddy Gray or the trajectory of events following his funeral. I understand on an intellectual level the anger and the frustrations that have played out, but have no experience of what the community is trying to traverse. Few of us do.  

Last night I listened to students retelling Ocean Classroom stories from over a year ago. The stories about sea-sick watches, lost shoes, guarding against rats in port all came out in rapid fire and humorous bursts. But most fascinating to watch was the way they braided narrative together, the way the back and forth collaborative process played out as the memory of one teller stoked memory from another.

The way this spring has unfolded, with three inches of snow on the ground Thursday morning, it’s hard not to think February thoughts even as we lean towards May. I saw Wari in his thick winter coat yesterday morning and asked him about the snow. “I am ready for it to go,” he said. He hopped a little, bounced up and down on the balls of his feet as though wanting to get into the game of spring, or maybe he just wanted to warm up. His jacket was zipped to his chin.

The period of learning that we are in now, Project Period, affords the opportunity to step (ease?) into the spring term with a singular focus.