Okay, I admit it: I’m proud of my kids, and yes, I may be a tiny bit prejudiced. Our son Noah (our “Website Guy’) was born at home, and also homeschooled since birth, and so it wasn’t until last fall (on his first day of classes at Johns Hopkins University), that he actually stepped into a real “official” classroom for the very first time. The academic year has gone by at warp speed, and Noah loves the college challenge, giving it more than the ‘old college try’! He took the maximum number of credits allowed, and finished up with a 4.0 average for the year, making the Deans List each semester. The press release in the paper said:
“Baltimore, Maryland.
Noah Belcher of Jackson, NH, a freshman at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has made the Dean’s List with a 4.0 average. Noah, whose family owns the Lodge at Jackson Village, was chosen Student Entrepreneur of the Year by the Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce in 1996 for his website design company, Granite State Internet Marketing. In 1997 he became a Software Engineer for Animetrics, Inc., where he has continued to work part time from school. Noah, a member of the Class of 2013, is pursuing a dual Bachelors and Masters degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. He was homeschooled for his entire pre-college education. He is an avid bagpipe player, chess player, and as a child won several National Chess Championships, as well as the Gold Medal for the US Chess Team in Brazil. At the age of 10, he was the youngest International FIDE Chess Master at that time. Belcher plans to return to the area this summer to work at Animetrics until school resumes in September.”
Noah will be back home next Thursday, one day exactly after his older brother Chris will have moved to Pittsburgh, (the absence of an overlap being the result of an unavoidable, snarkly scheduling snaffu). As you can see, there are some major household changes afoot here … proving once again that the only thing certain in this life is change itself. We are so looking forward to having Noah back home for the summer; we’ve missed him terribly … (not to mention the fact that now finally … we’ll be able to change from ‘Winter’ to ‘Summer’ on our homepage!!). Anyway, we’re so proud of him … continuously proud, each time that we receive a note from the Dean of Students or from one of his professors, as we did yesterday. This one was in regards to his final paper for his writing class in American Politics, and we nearly popped our buttons: “"Noah, This is a very rhetorically well-crafted essay. Your arguments have substance - to be sure - but your method of delivery and the subtlety of your language is outstanding. A pleasure to read. I must say, by the end of your essay (which seems like it would be very effective if delivered as a speech) I felt creeped-out by Obama's speech, which is a new feeling for me. Well-done, you really got into my head. (Just so you know, this was the highest grade for any of the final papers.) - Dr. P"
The paper in question was an expose of our President’s re-definition of the word ‘Liberty’, as contrasted with the definition that our Founding Father’s used, the one used in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”. I found it to be a really interesting read, and rather startling. Individual liberties rarely get taken away boldly, all at once. Like morals and personal integrity, they erode imperceptibly on a small scale, drop by drop, so that they are hardly even noticed at all. But then one day, when viewed collectively as a whole, we discover that all the drops of water, over the proverbial dam, have changed the flow and course of the entire river, and it will never be the same ever again. That’s how it is with our freedoms, too. Once we give them away, they’re not coming back. Click here to read a copy of this essay.
“Baltimore, Maryland.
Noah Belcher of Jackson, NH, a freshman at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has made the Dean’s List with a 4.0 average. Noah, whose family owns the Lodge at Jackson Village, was chosen Student Entrepreneur of the Year by the Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce in 1996 for his website design company, Granite State Internet Marketing. In 1997 he became a Software Engineer for Animetrics, Inc., where he has continued to work part time from school. Noah, a member of the Class of 2013, is pursuing a dual Bachelors and Masters degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. He was homeschooled for his entire pre-college education. He is an avid bagpipe player, chess player, and as a child won several National Chess Championships, as well as the Gold Medal for the US Chess Team in Brazil. At the age of 10, he was the youngest International FIDE Chess Master at that time. Belcher plans to return to the area this summer to work at Animetrics until school resumes in September.”
Noah will be back home next Thursday, one day exactly after his older brother Chris will have moved to Pittsburgh, (the absence of an overlap being the result of an unavoidable, snarkly scheduling snaffu). As you can see, there are some major household changes afoot here … proving once again that the only thing certain in this life is change itself. We are so looking forward to having Noah back home for the summer; we’ve missed him terribly … (not to mention the fact that now finally … we’ll be able to change from ‘Winter’ to ‘Summer’ on our homepage!!). Anyway, we’re so proud of him … continuously proud, each time that we receive a note from the Dean of Students or from one of his professors, as we did yesterday. This one was in regards to his final paper for his writing class in American Politics, and we nearly popped our buttons: “"Noah, This is a very rhetorically well-crafted essay. Your arguments have substance - to be sure - but your method of delivery and the subtlety of your language is outstanding. A pleasure to read. I must say, by the end of your essay (which seems like it would be very effective if delivered as a speech) I felt creeped-out by Obama's speech, which is a new feeling for me. Well-done, you really got into my head. (Just so you know, this was the highest grade for any of the final papers.) - Dr. P"
The paper in question was an expose of our President’s re-definition of the word ‘Liberty’, as contrasted with the definition that our Founding Father’s used, the one used in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”. I found it to be a really interesting read, and rather startling. Individual liberties rarely get taken away boldly, all at once. Like morals and personal integrity, they erode imperceptibly on a small scale, drop by drop, so that they are hardly even noticed at all. But then one day, when viewed collectively as a whole, we discover that all the drops of water, over the proverbial dam, have changed the flow and course of the entire river, and it will never be the same ever again. That’s how it is with our freedoms, too. Once we give them away, they’re not coming back. Click here to read a copy of this essay.
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