So this year, as I started casting about for students to include in our story "One Thing in Common" [p. 36], I expected to be impressed with their accomplishments. I asked colleagues at Johns Hopkins' various academic divisions to recommend students who were either quintessential examples of the kinds of students they were admitting, or students who were total surprises. I got pages of candidates to choose from. A Baltimore Scholar studying electrical engineering in the Whiting School. An environmental lawyer from California who is now a Krieger School grad student studying the social and cultural history of the lower and middle classes. A Minnesotan who studied in South Africa and Argentina before a stint in the Peace Corps and is fluent in Malagasy — he started this semester at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies' Bologna Center.

So yes, I was impressed with all they had achieved. But as I interviewed them — I asked each the same 15 questions, then chose a handful of the most interesting answers to print — and talked to some of them more casually at the photo shoots, I was more impressed by how nice they all were. And not just nice — patient, good-humored, thoughtful, dedicated. (Two of them had, in fact, already established their own foundations.) Instead of feeling inadequate, I just had fun. If Hopkins is educating the next generation of teachers, activists, doctors, scientists, and, well, editors, then maybe I won't mind being replaced.

Return to November 2007 Table of Contents