The First Week of January

I love the first week of January, despite often grim weather and inevitable trials of holiday chaos and holiday guilt.

Holiday chaos primarily refers to those boxes and bags strewn across the garage awaiting the return of wreaths, decorations, Christmas linens, and a ridiculous lineup of mismatched Christmasy figures perched on mantels, shelves, and windowsills. Like fairy-elves, they frolic during their annual “month-out” in December, yet each creature will slowly find its way back into its hovel, starting the day after Epiphany. Realistically, some linger for the whole period of liturgical Christmas (until February 2nd) but that’s only because they hide to avoid being grabbed and sent back into hibernation.

Holiday guilt, on the other hand, presents a different challenge. Still, it has to be wiped away because there’s not much you can do about Christmas cards not written or cookies not baked (seriously, people have had enough sweets by now). Harder to let go of, for me, is that string of lovely Christmasy ideas that filled my mind across the fall months. I suppose I should take comfort, though. My disproportionate ambition to crochet red and green scarves will rise again in November!

Meanwhile, the first days of January beam a message that anything is possible. “Possible,” for so many of us, invokes our academic hopes. Those hopes mean everything from retooling the math curriculum for our kids to carving out an extra precious hour daily to dive into the looming reading list of Tolstoi, Dante, or Sophocles. It could mean taking up the study of calligraphy or simply finding the courage to toss out an entire drawer of files that no longer help anybody!

For me, the beginning of January (as with late August), becomes a “happy place” in my life. Nothing is sweeter than launching new courses and webinars, constructing new assignments and listening lists, and seeking ways to make the good-ole material work better. Such academic goals, filled with burning hope, have the potential to disappoint once the realities of the semester unfold. Still, isn’t it glorious to be able to start fresh with something we care deeply about?

My mother used to visit me from Virginia often during my first decade of teaching at SMU. One of those visits occurred early in my first semester as a music history professor. She watched me sit up each night, frantically assembling lectures. Finally, she said (with her marvelous, pointed humor): “Didn’t you just get a Ph.D. in Music History? Why don’t you know this stuff?”

Well, I had just gotten the Ph.D. that very spring, so she wasn’t wrong in her basic charge. What she did not see is how specific (and even useless) an advanced academic degree is! Completing a doctoral dissertation may mean knowing a great deal about one thing, but not very much about anything else.

In subsequent January visits, she’d see me up late, reworking course materials. Again, she would ask: “Haven’t you taught that course already three (four, five, six) times?” And, again, the answer was “yes.” But that is precisely why I was reworking it! As every teacher knows, the gulf between the glorious ideals filling the instructor’s mind and the end point of the flesh-and-blood student sitting in a desk is fraught with landmines.

Still, hope springs eternal in the academic breast. And whether this mean plowing through an old syllabus to make sure the handouts are in place or entering (as teacher or student) into a new course where everything sings its promise, that fine feeling of renewal remains one of life’s greatest gifts.

With those sentiments as a backdrop, let me tell you what’s in store here at Professor Carol for spring. First, we will revive our popular “A Sprint through History” series, jumping back to the Late Medieval, moving through the Renaissance, and then continuing on the other side of the sessions already offered (archived on our website) to cover the fascinating pulse of the Early Modern period (1900-1920s), followed by the history, arts, and culture of the World-War II years.

Another new offering will be devoted to milestones of Western Classical instrumental music. Having covered a big bouquet of staged works (operas, oratorios, ballets), it’s time to visit some glorious symphonic and chamber masterworks and see what doors we can open. Also Hank has been busy revamping our website to bring friendlier user pages to our enrolled students and Circle of Scholar members.

And, of course, conference season will come. It starts in early March for me with speaking in Phoenix for the National Classical Education Symposium–an annual gathering of fascinating figures whose dedication to the highest standards of learning continues to awe me. New talks for the 2023 Great Homeschool Conventions are in the works, and the reunion with our Classical Consortium pals (with Messrs. Cothran, Kern, Perrin, and Pudewa) always makes me happy to contemplate.

Okay, that’s enough to consider, especially since the weather today really is lovely. Sparkling rays are blazing through my window, blasting off my glasses, and obliterating the computer screen. An hour ago, the random thought of a raised bed for my summer tomatoes crossed my mind. And while weeks of ice, cold, and dreck surely lie ahead (spring in North Carolina doesn’t arrive in February, as it did in North Central Texas), the sweet scent of soon-fertile earth wafted into the air this morning at sunrise.

I look forward to being with each of you this semester, be it in print, through courses (live or recorded), and in our webinars. Is it too late to sound my favorite New-Year’s greeting—the German phrase Guten Rutsch, or “Good Slide [into the New Year]”? It may be, but I don’t know a better one, so Guten Rutsch!