September 10, 1999

Every September, a Clean Slate and Fresh Chalk

By JAY PARINI

Beginnings. The sense of beginnings is one of the things I have most prized about working in the academy. There is always a fresh start, with new students, new colleagues, new courses. Even old colleagues somehow look new in September, when the light of the sun seems especially bright. It's as though the world were gearing up for a final summery blast before the inevitable decline, what Robert Frost in "The Oven Bird" called "that other fall we name the