All of a sudden, we find ourselves in mid-October. Admissions Counselors are busy visiting schools all over the country. Alumni are representing St. John’s at local college fairs. The leaves are turning gem like colors. The evenings are becoming crisp, all while our students are settling into their books, into their studies, into the deep, nurturing community of our college.

As I was walking to the coffee shop yesterday, one of the blackboards  caught my attention.  First, it was covered, completely covered. Then I stepped forward to take a closer look and I saw that it was a series of posting from various student assistants, French, Writing, Ancient Greek, Math, etc. with offers of help.

It made me reflect for a moment on the zeitgeist of our St. John’s community.  Shared learning. Continual learning. We establish formal and informal structures to foster a kind of intellectual interdependence on the one another.  The faculty, the students need one another to examine and understand the concepts at hand; whether in a freshman biology laboratory or a senior mathematics tutorial, or on the grassy knoll, students and faculty alike, lean on one another for assistance.  This shared inquiry is the at  the heart of what we do.   The whole four-year all-required curriculum thrives because we are expected to help each other.