Friday, October 28, 2011


Mom asked me to be a judge at the area interscholastic speech event this past Monday.  My sister put it this way, "They're that short on judges?"

So I was prepped with a room full of teachers - some of them who taught me in high school - and throughout the night I was posed questions.


1.  "Where do you teach?"

2.  "Where did you go to college?  For teaching?"

3.  "What's your degree in?"

In short,

4.  "What qualifies you to be a judge?"


1.  At home.

2.  Dordt...but only for two years.

3.  English Education....but it's only an AA degree, which, technically speaking, gets you nothing.  Nothing, I guess, except the lessons I learned in those two years.  About literature.  About teaching.  About dorm life.  About others.  About myself.  Ultimately, I'm still working for my degree - is that why your questions ends with a preposition?  A masters...in Life.

4.  A college speech class?  Love of words, written and spoken?  Love of kids?

“How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the rule of three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No. A woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”  G.K Chesterton

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