I recently went on a backpacking trip in the Golden Trout Wilderness, just south of Fresno. EDTS (Extra Day Trips) are a long withstanding and slightly painful Thacher tradition intended to build character, although many times throughout the trip - while powering up a switchback at top speed for no apparent reason, while morosely dropping an iodine tablet into decidedly questionable water, while being attacked by swarms of bees - I wondered rather desperately what kind of character I could possibly building. A very bitter one, perhaps?

    A few words from one of my fellow campers and classmates registered with me strongly throughout the trip, and even now still, as I enter the start of the school year.

    "You know what's funny?" she pondered the first morning as I blearily rubbed my eyes and examined the freezing campsite. "Some people are in school right now!"

    Ah yes, give me the wide, open plains over cold-hearted academia any day of the week!