Friday's assembly featured a how-well-do you-know-Proctor quiz game along the lines of "Who Wants to be a (Proctor) Millionaire?" The contestant was Evan Cross, who handled the situation with the aplomb we expect of a four-year senior. With the stakes high, and an impossible question (Which of these four teachers started his/her career as a Corrections Officer for the State of North Carolina?) he chose to utilize one of his "life lines" and telephoned his buddy Mike, who sat about 80 feet away surrounded by 300 students and 80 faculty. The situation was hilarious at several levels.

It didn't work for Evan in this case, because Mike didn't have any better clue than the rest of us whose career started in such a bizarre place, but that's not the point. Consider the notion of life lines.....of having resources available to help you attain a goal. On Saturday afternoon, our football team played a heroic game. They were outscored by a fine team, but I was most impressed by our players' ability to sacrifice for one another--to play as a team. I saw lots of life lines being used with great success.

At half-time, your roving camera strayed to the 3rd soccer game which, regrettably, had just finished. The first player I encountered proclaimed that they had won, but most people agreed that the game finished as a 4-4 tie. My guess is that a lot of very young soccer players had a great experience that afternoon.

Life lines are opportunities to get the help you need. We have lots of them.

Responses to what we learn from round tables (and Notices To the Advisor) are where the rubber meets the road. This is where we execute our structure (in a school that seems--at first glance (ironically)--to have less structure than some. Life lines are systemic.

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