Renee Auriema

Today I learned of the new version of that old chestnut, the SAT. I have never trusted this easily manipulated compendium of tricks (if you have the money for test prep). Pay your fee and get your score. It was the last credential I considered when I read in a college admissions office, and now they are altering and retouching it. They constantly re-jigger it because, guess what, it does not work. Out with the compulsory essay, out with decent vocabulary words-out with the whole lot would be more like it.

What are you reading? I can promise that in most any college interview one question will be about what you are reading outside of class and what you think about it. If you start with, "It is so interesting," I will haunt you you for the rest of your days. Think about why you like or dislike a book, with hefty reasons backing up your remarks. Pick your books well! I once saw a copy of Shopaholics peeking out of a student's bag on the way to an interview--not a good choice. Ask your English teacher or a real reader in an independent bookstore if you cannot come up with a title.

Prepare, prepare, prepare. I have run into several students who have not checked out the fine print sufficiently--for graduate programs and for transfers. After one has slaved over essays and self-justifications and explanations is not the time to discover that one is not yet qualified to apply. Be sure that all those "ducks are in a row." Call the schools in question if not sure of deadlines and requirements. It will save immense aggravation.

To read again a book misunderstood as a teenager! Les dieux ont soif is the story of visceral "merited injustice" to the accused of the Tribunal (in the name of Reason) of the righteous and the pure--of whom we all should be afraid. Look what is happening in India with an academic history of Hinduism being pulled from the shelves by the publisher and burned in the public squares.

Museums are the backbone of my life, and I often exhort my students to see certain exhibits such as the current Charles Marville photography show at the @MetMuseum. Not just for a student of 19th century France, but for any who love the sculpture of the cityscape, the empty street at dawn, the muted contrasts of old printing. Here is the Paris of Flaubert and Balzac sometimes reduced to a tracery of broken walls and chimneys exposed like worms in wood before Haussman made it modern!