Remembering MSU ‘March Madness’ 2011

Now that April is here, perhaps it is safe to reminisce on the Madness of March some of us witnessed on our television screens (while others traveled to Newark or Tucson or Houston or wherever) to participate in the drama and spectacle of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

The fact that our Racers did not make the tournament after winning the OVC regular season championship certainly diminished the excitement around here, but two of my alma maters made the field.

The University of Kentucky, where I completed two graduate degrees and which I follow both as a fan and as a subject of academic interest overcame six SEC road losses in the regular season to win the SEC Tournament in Atlanta and then four games in the NCAA Tournament—against Princeton, West Virginia, number one seeded Ohio State, and then North Carolina—to make the Final Four before succumbing to the eventual champion Connecticut Huskies by 1 point (56-55).

Now, for Kentucky, the drama continues to unfold:  Who will stay?  Who will enter the NBA draft?  Players have until April 24, I think, to decide.  From what I’ve seen from high school all-star games, however, with Davis, Gilchrist, Wiltjer, and Teague—it sounds like a law firm, doesn’t it?—the Wildcats will be loaded for another year.

My undergraduate alma mater, Belmont University, had the best season in the school’s history since ascending to NCAA Division I status.  When I played there in the mid-1970s, Belmont competed in the small college NAIA.

This year, Belmont went 19-1 in the NCAA’s Atlantic Sun Conference (losing only to our arch-rival Lipscomb University in the “Battle of the Boulevard”) and went 30-5 overall, winning the A-Sun Conference Tournament in Macon, Georgia, and then, as a 13th seed losing to 4th-seeded Wisconsin,72-58, in Tucson in the NCAA Tournament’s first round.

The game proved to be an inglorious end to a storybook season for the small Nashville school.  I say “small Nashville school,” but the Belmont University of today, with almost 6,000 students, is five times the size of the Belmont College from which I graduated in 1978.  Then, only 1,400 or so undergraduates scurried across that tiny gem of a campus, located not far from the downtown of the Music City, just at the end of Music Row.  Today, the institution’s storied Music Business program continues to thrive, but represents only one of many other top-notch undergraduate and graduate programs.

Now there is a new Pharmacy School and ground has been broken for a Belmont School of Law.  The university has expanded in both enrollment and real estate.

I flourished at Belmont in Nashville and at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.  In fact, I look back on those years with fondness and appreciation, and I cannot go back to either city without visiting the campuses, however changed they might be.

Despite the tournament losses to Connecticut for the Wildcats and to Wisconsin for the Bruins, the games of last month brought back a flood of memories of bygone days, when a small-town western Kentucky boy played basketball, not against Ohio State and North Carolina and Connecticut and Wisconsin, but against Lambuth and Bethel and Lipscomb and Tusculum and Fisk.

I miss those days, to be sure, but at least I can continue to live out the dream of college basketball, albeit vicariously now, by watching Murray State and Belmont and Kentucky.  But, oh, to be young again.

I will write more next week about my Belmont experience, and then in two weeks I will delve into my graduate school years in Lexington.

As for now, let me just say that I am proud of the institutions with which I am associated.  I love them all, whether they are located in Nashville, Lexington, or Murray.

Anguished English and Writing Bloopers

Kids say the darnedest things.  And, sometimes, students write the darnedest things.  An essay response is required on every examination that I give in my History classes at Murray State.

Students often produce well-reasoned, well-organized, and well-crafted essays within a fixed block of time, one hour and fifteen minutes for a Tuesday/Thursday class.  This is no small achievement.

From time to time, however, the pressure of the clock and a lack of preparation cause students to state ideas with less clarity.  Sometimes, faulty sentence structure, poor word choice, and fuzzy thinking (all problems for which I have been guilty) produce sentences that I wince at and savor all at once, sentences that I am quick to include in a growing “student blooper” file.

Bloopers are not limited to student essays, of course.  Sunday School provides a venue for children to utter their own interpretations of the Bible.  A recent email I received revealed a few “Bible Facts from Kids.”  One young Bible scholar assures us that “Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt by day but a ball of fire at night.”  Another stated confidently that “Solomon, one of David’s sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.”  Yet another offered one concept of Biblical marriage.  “Christians should have only one wife,” the youngster said, before quickly adding, “This is called monotony.”

Church bulletins sometimes reveal less than enduring truths.  One bulletin announced, “Thursday at 5:00 p. m. there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers’ Club.  All those wishing to become little mothers, please meet with the minister in his study.”  Another bulletin proclaimed, “This afternoon there will be a meeting in the south and north ends of the church.  Children will be baptized at both ends.”  In one announcement for a church charity function, it was revealed that “The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind and they may be seen in the church basement on Friday afternoon.”

My favorite bloopers come in the written offerings of History students.  I grade essays for style as well as content, and sometimes students resent such meddling.

On one of my course evaluations one student moaned (and I quote directly):  “This is a History class not an English class  I do not feel me English down fall should make me loose points.  Even English class was give more than 5 min. after answering 40 problems to write 3 pages with no gram. & spelling mistakes.” Oh well.

In an examination essay, one of my very own students stated that “the biggest gold rush in the 1880’s was the 1849 gold rush.”  My students are not the only culprits, however.  Richard Lederer, a teacher in Concord, New Hampshire, is the editor of “Anguished English,” a book in which he compiled some favorite bloopers from his students at St. Paul’s School.

One of Mr. Lederer’s students wrote that “Ancient Egypt was inhabited my mummies, and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot.”  In a unit on ancient Greece, a student revealed that “Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice.  They killed him.  Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.  After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.”

In American History, one student elaborated on the early years of Abraham Lincoln.  “Lincoln’s mother died in infancy,” the student wrote, “and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands.”  My favorite blooper came from the pen of a student contemplating the achievement of Sir Francis Drake when the explorer circumnavigated the globe.  Perhaps the student was confused when he or she wrote, “Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a hundred foot clipper.”  Oh me.