Sugar buzz

I still have not figured out why there are so many cupcakes at Vanderbilt. I think there were three separate events this week with cupcakes covering the tables. This one was a taste-testing venture. Ten local businesses made pint-sized cupcakes and hundreds of students turned out to rank the iced miniatures.

Heat wave

Spring never seems to sneak up in the South. It's suddenly 80 degrees, with tank tops and sunburn covering the streets.

Loss

Vanderbilt lost an outstanding senior over spring break to a car accident. Friends and family gathered to tell her story in the campus chapel. The young woman's best friend, a poet, cries as she reads verses composed as an epithet.

Faces in the crowd

The editorial fellow and I have been doing a series of student profiles this semester. The most recent group is a female engineering major (a rarity), the president of the College Dems, a non-traditional student who overcame being homeless in her teens to be a leader on campus and a freshman baseball player shaking up the lineup.
It's great to get out of the office and meet interesting people again.

The future of health care

It is something on the tip of everyone's tongues these days. A group of medical students sat down with us to talk about the implications of the new law. The division quickly arose between who was in medicine for the acclaim and the money and who was in it to save the world one patient at a time. It's easy to see why Congress has had so much trouble sorting through the sentiments.

Rain in Manhattan

Just a few photos from an escapade in the rain the last time I was in Manhattan. One of my students braved the weather to capture the unsuspecting tourists as well!

California weather

My mother has this knack for closing restaurants wherever we go. This time she made it rain, then snow, in the Mojave Desert. Thank goodness for sunshine and beaches.