Old School.

My daughter, Caroline, spent last week with her brother, Davis, at his college, Sewanee. My only little girl is plenty smart, but needs some motivation to apply herself in her Senior year, so she might also get into the small, Southern, Episcopal, liberal arts school that is Sewanee. Sewanee is set on a beautiful 10,000 acre campus in the middle of Tennessee, on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau. In addition to a full regimine of sports, Greek, and community service outlets, Sewanee has a lot of outdoor adventure stuff, including caving. Davis took Caroline caving. The picture at left does not include my chilluns, but is a picture of Sewanee yout' after a round of caving. I attended Sewanee, and although my diplomas read "The Florida State University" and "Stetson University College of Law", most of my memories of higher education are from Sewanee. Some things have changed at my old school: the dress code no longer requires, as it did in 1978-1980, that men wear coats and ties to class and that women wear dresses or skirts; no longer are there classes on alternating Saturdays (with no classes on alternating Wednesdays); Freshmen may now have cars on campus; and drinking to retched excess is apparently now a bad thing (though, college kids being college kids...). Even the name has changed from the politically incorrect "The University of the South, Sewanee" to the milder "Sewanee, The University of the South". Many things are the same: Sewanee is still beautiful; the professors are still interesting; the standards are still high (yeah, I know, I got in. I played football, so they cut me some slack); the place still reeks of tradition. I'm rooting for Caroline. She's funny, has wonderful energy, a will of steel, and, as I mentioned, she's abundantly smart. Hmmm. Still, wouldn't hurt if she played basketball...