Ask the Administrator: Choosing a Good Community College

Via Sherman Dorn, a frustrated young correspondent writes:

I'm a 26-year-old community college dropout who would like to go back, but I'm not sure how to make sure a specific community college fits my needs. In my one year in college, I earned 27 credits, mostly in humanities and arts, but I'm really interested in sciences. I think I need to find a community college that has two qualities I couldn't find before I quit a few years ago:

1) A community college that really sees the transfer mission as important; 

2) A community college where the faculty and students are much more engaged in classes than the last one I attended. My classmates there were largely disinterested, the professors boring and disengaged, and I couldn't see that either group really wanted to be there. I don't want to repeat that experience. 

Friends tell me that there has to be a community college that is better than my last one, but I'm not sure how to find it. I'm fortunate enough to be mobile, but there is no such thing as a Princeton Review guide to community colleges. How do I find out what a community college is good at before I enroll? How do I look for one that meets my needs?

I like this question.  How do you recognize a good transfer college when you see one?

I’d start by working backwards.  If you know generally what you want to study, look for some four-year colleges or universities that are particularly strong in that area.  Then call up their transfer admissions counselor -- usually found in the admissions office -- and ask which community colleges are their largest feeders.  That can be helpful, because while colleges have overall reputations, sometimes a particular college is notably strong (or weak) in a particular program.  

The advantage of going this route is that you’ll known from an unbiased source which colleges are likeliest to get you where you want to go.  

Mobility is great, though getting “in-state” (or, in some states, “in-county”) rates sometimes requires being in a location for some time first.  Depending on the jurisdiction, the premium for being a transplant may be considerable.  In many cases, the out-of-area premium applies to online courses as well, so that isn’t necessarily a free pass.

Depending on what you took before leaving, the good news is that much of it may still apply to your new program.  Even science-focused majors -- especially the transfer-oriented ones -- still have “general education” requirements.  In other words, even chemistry majors have to take English and some social sciences.  Since your first go-round focused on arts and humanities, you may be able to apply much of what you’ve already done to the gen ed requirements in your new program.  In other words, you probably won’t have to start from scratch.

Once you’ve narrowed it down to a few community colleges, I’d contact each one and ask to speak to the transfer counselor.  Ask about “articulation agreements” with the destination schools to which you’d like to go.  “Articulation agreements” are contracts between colleges in which one college agrees to accept certain credits in transfer from the other.  The goal here is to see if they have some sort of written guarantee that all of your credits (usually with a GPA minimum) will carry over.  It would also be a good idea to ask about actual numbers of students who have done what you want to do.  A well-worn path is less likely to have unpleasant surprises than one that one student did, they think, about seven years ago.

Finally, if you’re genuinely motivated, it can be a good idea to reach out to some faculty in the department or program in which you’re interested.  Some may get back to you and some may not, but they can give you the unvarnished truth about what to expect.  Four-year colleges routinely allow prospective students to visit a class, to get a flavor for the climate of the place.  Two-year colleges don’t have a history of that, but I don’t know why it couldn’t be done.  If you take the initiative and comport yourself as a motivated, mature adult, you’ll probably find doors opening for you.  

I wouldn’t rely solely on general reputation in the community.  That’s often a lagging indicator, and it may well reflect people in programs other than your own.  If you want, say, chemistry, then hearing from someone who graduated in early childhood education ten years ago is of limited usefulness.  

Good luck!

Wise and worldly readers -- especially those who have been in that situation -- what would you recommend?  How can a prospective student distinguish a strong community college from a weak one?

Have a question?  Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.

Nerdvana, with The Boy

Last weekend I took a picture of The Boy sitting in front of a life-size Jabba the Hutt.  Until then, I never thought I would write that sentence.

We went to the Boston Comic Con.  It was the first Comic Con for both of us.

I’m told that the Uber Con is in San Diego; this is more of a regional one.  But it was still pretty impressive, at least to a layperson.  

I’m old enough to remember comic book stores as seedy little places presided over by vaguely disturbing men.  If you’ve seen The Simpsons, you get the idea.  (“Worst.  Blog.  Ever.”)  And that demographic is very much still there.

But it’s a much more diverse and lively group now.  The gender split was nowhere near as lopsided as I recall that world being, and it wasn’t lily-white, either.  (Of course, in some costumes, who could tell?)  But the real visual feast was the costuming.  

We saw stormtroopers, and Spock ears, and Batmen (Batmans?).  Characters from the cartoon Adventure Time were everywhere.  Star Wars was fairly well-represented; my favorite was a toddler dressed as an Ewok.  Several Lara Crofts strutted about.  Spider-Man was large among the preschool set.  One grown man even dressed as Waldo, from Where’s Waldo.  And there was a host of costumes I didn’t recognize at all.  Some of those looked zombie-ish, and some looked like manga come to life.  Neither is really my style, but they were fun to see.

The Boy and I did a few laps around the exhibits, making sure to stop by and see a friend who was selling his artwork and generally just taking in the scene.  TB took my picture with Frankenstein’s monster, and I took his with Jabba and, later, a pair of affable stormtroopers.  (You don’t often see the word “affable” next to the word “stormtroopers,” but credit where credit is due.)  We even had a brief discussion with a perfectly cordial man who came dressed as, and I’m guessing here, someone who had escaped after a zombie had taken a few good chomps.  He really could not have been nicer.

The cordiality of it all really struck me.  It didn’t have the clique-y, judgmental feel that I remember as a kid.  It’s much improved.

After the novelty of the people-watching started to wear off, TB and I decided it was time to check out what was for sale.  He was entranced by some of the Minecraft paraphernalia: foam rubber pickaxes shaped to look pixilated, that sort of thing.  But it was a bit outside his price range, so he retreated instead to a bin full of old Mad magazines, eventually settling on a few.  

Meanwhile, I flipped through a carton of miscellaneous stuff from the seventies, getting a fresh look at stuff I dimly recalled from childhood.  The real find was a copy of Us Weekly in which the cover story was a profile of Lorne Greene as the reluctant authority figure on Battlestar Galactica.  The same issue featured a full-page, black-and-white ad for the Dodge Omni.  That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about America in the seventies.

“Nerdvana” might be overstating a little, but it was heartening to see so many people let their geek flags fly.  The Boy doesn’t see a contradiction in being simultaneously smart, nerdy, sociable, and confident.  It didn’t strike him as weird that a collection of the wounded undead would be diverse, chatty, and welcoming.  

And it shouldn’t.  I hope it never does.

The Pros and Cons of Degree Creep

Why are nurses being required to get higher degrees, while teachers are being told not to?

In nursing, there’s a slow but steady move afoot to require nurses to have bachelor’s degrees in nursing, rather than associate’s degrees.  This is a major issue for community colleges that, like my own, are barred legislatively from offering bachelor’s degrees.  To the extent that hospitals and other desirable clinical sites give preference to students in bachelor’s programs, community college programs have to work harder to provide our students what they need.

Historically, associate’s degrees have been enough (along with the NCLEX exam) to move into practice.  Then, those who wanted to could go on to bachelor’s degrees or even higher if they chose.  Bachelor’s degree completion programs in nursing -- the courses that nurses who already have associate’s have to take to get the bachelor’s -- are mostly “theory,” as opposed to clinical, so the contribution that they make, while real, doesn’t show up in direct patient care.  The piece in Community College Times mentions that there isn’t any actual evidence that nurses with higher degrees give better care.  But the move towards the new requirement proceeds anyway.

Meanwhile, North Carolina has passed a law saying that it will stop giving extra pay for teachers who earn Master’s degrees.  Many states have awarded salary bumps for graduate degrees for a long time; North Carolina has decided to stop, and, at the same time, to eliminate teacher tenure.  The argument being used there is that Master’s degrees don’t necessarily equate to better teaching, so why pay for them?

So in one case, degrees that don’t improve outcomes are becoming more important.  In the other case, degrees that don’t improve outcomes are becoming less important.

As someone in the degree-granting sector, I find this curious.  Why are we moving in opposite directions on the issue of degree creep?

It could be any number of things.  The absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence; just because there’s no actual evidence that degree creep in either profession actually helps patients or students doesn’t mean that it doesn’t help; there may be benefits that the current measures don’t capture.  Of course, that isn’t much on which to base a requirement.

I’m inclined to suspect economic motives.

The difference could be a function of who pays.  In the case of public school teachers, the government pays.  Put differently, in K-12, we have a single-payer system. (Yes, there are private K-12 schools, but they’re unaffected by the North Carolina bill.)  In a single-payer system, if the single payer in question decides to get cost-conscious, then that’s what happens.  In the case of nurses, by contrast, money comes from a myriad of sources, each with its own agenda.

I assume that both teachers and nurses would like to maximize their pay and social standing, which would suggest that both would be sympathetic to higher degree requirements.  (Higher barriers to entry create shortages, which benefit incumbents.)  But in the case of teachers, raising the skill level of teachers may or may not directly benefit the school.  School funding often has little to do with student performance.  I could understand the people who pay for schools deciding that higher salaries for unproven results are not worth it.  

The folks who teach graduate programs in education are rightly terrified of this move, but the countermove strikes me as obvious.  Find a way to show that the degree is worth it.

In the case of nurses, I suspect there may be another motive afoot.  Yes, nurses make decent money, but to the extent that nurses’ skills are upgraded, it’s possible for a practice or hospital to get by with fewer doctors, who are incredibly expensive.  In other words, what looks at first blush like an added expense -- higher salaries for nurses -- actually winds up being a long-term savings.  I’d expect both health insurers and hospitals to be able to do that math.

The only thing slowing the move to a universal bachelor’s requirement for nursing is the constant need for new nurses.  If you took community colleges out of the business of preparing nurses, medical providers would face a supply crash in short order.  Even if many of the providers would really prefer to move everyone to a bachelor’s level, right now there just isn’t the labor force to do it.  So there’s a sort of gradual ratcheting up, instead of an across the board mandate.

Wise and worldly readers, what do you think?  Why are unproven degrees becoming both more and less important?

Remember the Future?

1989 was a more innocent time.  The Pixies and The Replacements dominated college radio. Communism fell, thereby ending history.  (Anyone remember the end of history?  Good times, good times...)  The Simpsons premiered, at the last possible moment that a Homer Simpson could afford a two-story colonial.  And an entire generation of college students was told, as this Chronicle piece from 1989 shows -- and hat-tip to William Pannapacker for finding it - that the next few decades promised a rosy job market for liberal arts doctorates.

The article is behind a paywall, apparently, so I’ll convey some of the highlights:

- The arts and sciences face severe faculty shortages in the future, especially in the humanities and social sciences, a new study has found.

However, the study -- which makes projections to the year 2012 --

- [William Bowen, the author of the study] also noted the study's finding that while particular institutions, fields, or departments might feel the effects of the anticipated end to mandatory retirement, no overall significant quantitative effect is expected.

"People will always retire," he said. "There just may be a little lag time, that's all."

I swear, I am not making this up.  In fact, I remember it well.  It the the Fall of my senior year of college, and this information -- widely shared at the time -- influenced my decision to go to graduate school.  From what we were told, it seemed like a good economic move.

This is why I remain wary of long-term occupational projections.

Over the past week or so, I’ve seen a host of stories about how the end of mandatory retirement from tenured positions greatly slowed the pace of faculty retirements, thereby jamming the pipeline for the next generation. Scott Jaschik’s story “They Aren’t Retiring” sets the table nicely, and works as a counterpoint to “a little lag time.”  Yesterday’s piece about a professor at Penn State getting his “fat Boomer butt out of the way” set off a firestorm of comments.  And not to be outdone, Mark Bauerlein opined in Bloomberg that “Old Professors Never Quit, They Just Hang Around.”  Although the “fat Boomer butt” line was a contender for Best Quote, I have to give the Best Quote award to Mark Taylor, cited by Bauerlein, for the instant classic “[t]enure decisions render illiquid a significant percentage of endowments at the precise moment when more flexibility is required.”

“Render illiquid.”  It’s not quite “the best that has been thought and said,” but it fits the times.

Issues of intergenerational justice get precious little airtime in higher ed, mostly because the rhetorical pitchforks and torches come out whenever someone brings them up.  But they matter.  

The classic 1940 AAUP statement on tenure approvingly mentioned a “normal retirement age,” though the folks who like to cite that statement tend not to mention that part.  In the gap between 1987, when the Supreme Court put mandatory retirement on notice, and 1994, when it dealt the final blow, statements like Bowen’s were legion.  Then the age cap went away, incumbents got a windfall, and the pattern of the industry eating its young got worse.  

By 1997, when I emerged with my doctorate, the market for young academics in the humanities and social sciences was a bad joke.  And those who did manage to find full-time jobs often found themselves paying much higher percentages of their salaries towards retirement plans and health insurance than their more senior predecessors, thanks to the perverse miracle of “tiered” contracts and benefits.  Unsustainably generous benefits for early arrivals were paid for by beating up on the newcomers, whether through tiered benefits for full-timers, or none at all for part-timers, whose ranks swelled.  This pattern holds across many industries, and is typically a sign of crisis.  It is not how healthy industries behave.

It would be misleading and unhelpful to suggest that the end of mandatory retirement was the primary driver behind the catastrophic reversal of the trends Bowen foresaw.  But it would be naive to pretend that it didn’t make a bad situation worse.  It wasn’t primary, but it contributed, and it still does.

What makes the issue as frustrating as it is -- other than the ritualistic and blistering personal attacks -- is that it’s almost never discussed honestly.  Legislating safety for one group doesn’t make systemic risk go away.  It just redistributes it to other groups.  When an entire industry is facing increasing risk, those other groups get it with both barrels.  That’s not an implementation error; it’s a given.  But the issue is rarely, if ever, discussed that way.  

None of this presumes any judgment about any individual’s performance.  I assume that the performance of people in any given age group varies widely.  That’s not the point.  The point is that a fundamental change to a basic tenet of the industry was promulgated without honest discussion, in an environment in which serious, respected people got the economics catastrophically wrong.  And even now, decades later, it’s still considered shocking when someone brings it up.  

In 1989, it was still possible for thoughtful and intelligent people of goodwill to believe that we were on the cusp of a glorious future, in which none of these issues would matter, young graduates would be in high demand, and history would be reduced to a scrolling catalog of peace and prosperity.  But we know better now.  It’s time for a more honest conversation, in which we start with the premise that no employment policy can eliminate risk.  A little more epistemological humility about the future, and a little less hubris about the power of policy, could go a long way.

Completed But Not Graduated

What do you do with a student who finished high school but didn’t graduate?

For a long time, that would have been a nonsense question.  If you made it to the end of high school, you graduated.  But that’s not necessarily true anymore.

With the advent of statewide exams that students have to pass to get a diploma, we’re seeing a small, but increasing, cohort of students who finished and passed the twelfth grade, but who didn’t officially “graduate” because they didn’t pass the exam.  Instead, they get “certificates of completion.”

Until last year, we had the option of admitting those students into degree programs through the “Ability to Benefit” rule.  If a student scored at a particular level on a placement exam, that would suffice to show that the student had the ability to benefit from college-level instruction, and we could admit her.  

But that rule was rescinded as of July 1, 2012.  Now, we can only admit students to credit-bearing programs if they have either a high school diploma or a GED.  For our purposes, certificates of completion don’t count as diplomas.  Students who ran out of high school, but didn’t pass the exam, have to get a GED.

That wasn’t really the purpose of the GED.  It was really meant for dropouts who wanted to get back on track.  But here we are.

Meanwhile, over the last year, the GED became both more rigorous and more expensive.

So now a student who finished high school, but who struggles on exams, has to take a second exam -- now more rigorous and expensive -- in order to be eligible to take yet another set of exams to determine placement.

*headdesk*

In fairness, nobody consciously designed the system this way.  High-stakes graduation exams came from the state, in response to a federal law (No Child Left Behind).  The Feds repealed Ability to Benefit long after that, in response to, well, I’m sure it was in response to something.  The GED is run by a private company, and it’s moving to ensure its own continued relevance in the face of the older exam underpredicting success.  

But at a certain point, intentions don’t matter much.  The world confronting the student with a certificate of completion is much harsher than it was even two years ago.  (I can hear Tressie McMillan Cottom in my head: “It’s a SYSTEM!”  Well, yeah...)  A student who had the misfortune to attend a weaker high school is likelier to score poorly on the graduation exam, if she makes it that far.  Then, she’ll be less likely to be able to afford the new GED, and to pass it.  And if she does manage to pass it, then she’s faced with another battery of exams that could result in additional semesters of coursework that won’t count towards a degree, but that will count towards the new, lower lifetime Pell limit that was reduced in 2012...

Humph.  

None of this is a reflection on any one person’s (or one college’s) performance.  It’s about the rules of the game by which we all play.  In my more utopian moments, I occasionally wonder how the rules would be different if we kept in mind that student who made it through a rough high school but doesn’t test well.  She deserves better than this.

Ask the Administrator: Alternatives to Faculty Jobs?

An underemployed philosopher writes:

I have a PhD in philosophy, which I received in 2010, and have had terrible luck on the job market. I had a full-time lecturer position for 2 years (before I was done with the PhD) but have mostly been adjuncting since then. I had hoped to transition into some type of administrative position at a university, but have found that difficult. Do you have any advice on doing that? I initially found your blog when doing a google search for that. However, your post (from 2010, I think) was more for those who are currently faculty and want to make the transition, and I haven't really found anything too specific on Chronicle or Insider Higher Ed.

What I'm wondering about is moving into such a position at a university or college where I am not faculty. Does that happen? Also, I realized that I don't even have a good sense of the type of positions for which I would appear appealing. Obviously positions like Assistant Dean are out. In the past, I have applied to a random set of openings, without a sense of which ones were appropriate to my background. Or do these others want someone with manager/business background? I don't have that--only experience working with students and my first-hand experience with what is needed to succeed as an undergraduate and graduate student.

I have a feeling this is a common question.  

There’s actually a movement afoot among academics who have decided to look for non-faculty positions that take advantage of their degrees: they call it “alternative academic,” or, more commonly, “alt-ac.”  I can’t claim expertise on the alt-ac movement, though I’ve followed it off and on with some interest.  Alt-ac positions include research positions in libraries, work in “digital humanities” (for those who have the tech expertise), various positions in foundations, and administration, among others.

Within the “alt-ac” movement, one of the persistent themes that comes up is making the psychological adjustment away from a goal that you’ve pursued for probably a decade.  There’s a taboo in many graduate programs about doing anything other than a tenure-track faculty position, preferably at a research-intensive place.  Once you get beyond grad school, there’s a second taboo against administration generally.  So kudos on being able to get past the brainwashing, and on recognizing that hey, even Ph.D.’s gotta eat.  No shame in that.

(I had my own variation on that when I accepted a full-time faculty position at DeVry. There was, and still is, a taboo against for-profit higher ed as well.  But I had a choice between adjuncting at more prestigious places, or swallowing my pride and actually earning a living.  I decided to earn a living.  Yes, I would have preferred a nice tenure-track gig at, say, Oberlin, but that just wasn’t in the cards.  I don’t regret my choice.)

Assuming you’ve made peace with the idea, the next step is finding a way to get a foot in the door.  In this case, that involves identifying a likely door.

In some cases, it’s possible to start directly in “administration,” but most of the time, you need to spend some time and build some street cred on either faculty or staff.  Once you’ve shown your talents there, and learned some of the lay of the land, you’ll be much likelier to be able to move up.  I’d suggest looking at roles like “academic advisor.”  A role like that can draw upon your knowledge of the academic side of the college, and can expose you to both the reality of how students make decisions -- it isn’t always textbook -- and how more vocationally-focused programs are structured.  

Grant-funded programs can also be good points of entry.  Grant-funded programs (also referred to as “soft money”) usually have expiration dates, so the jobs they post may only exist for a few years.  In your shoes, that’s not a bad thing; do a few years to get experience and see if you like it, and then either move up or do something else.  The advantage of the time-limited job is that you probably won’t have as much competition for it.

If you’re really savvy, you might be able to parlay experience in a grant-funded program into some level of grant-management experience.  If you get good at either grant management or grant-writing, you will have a host of opportunities.  The major issue there is having nerves of steel when it comes to funding deadlines.  Depending on local context, you may also be able to teach on the side while doing a grant-funded day job.  That will earn you some extra money and keep you in touch with the classroom, without dooming you to trying to live on part-time wages.

Traditional academic administration -- department chairs, deans, and the like -- typically require time in the faculty role.  

The key, I think, is in not thinking entirely short-term.  Yes, you need to make a living, and that’s valid.  But if all goes well, you have decades ahead of you.  Think about a job that will position you well for future jobs.  Any of these would.

When it comes to opportunities at research universities, I’ll defer to those of my wise and worldly readers who work there.  It’s a very different context.

Good luck!

Wise and worldly readers, what say you?  Are there other appealing options an underemployed philosopher could pursue?

Have a question?  Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.

Vacation Fragments

Until last week, I hadn’t been back to Western New York since my Dad’s funeral.  I grew up out there, outside of Rochester, amidst a fair bit of family drama, and some of that drama continued even after I left.  For a long time, the only reason I could see to go back was family obligation, and even that was grudging.

But years have passed, and I wanted my kids to see some of the sights.  So with some disbelief that we were actually doing it, this summer we loaded up the family truckster and headed west.

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As an American Dad who enjoys baseball, I had to take the kids to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  It’s well worth seeing.  My Dad took me when I was about TB’s age, and I barely knew who any of the players were.  Now I’m old enough to have seen many of the players play.  And the kids were good sports about indulging my stories of them.  (Another Dad laughed out loud when he overheard me describe Reggie Jackson as a horrible outfielder.  He agreed, but it’s not the sort of thing you expect to hear there.)  

After many years as an academic, I look at museums differently than I once did.  The baseball museum had plenty of material on Jackie Robinson, though less on the old Negro Leagues than I thought would have been appropriate.  It also had a pretty good exhibit on the various women’s professional baseball teams over the years, which I made sure that The Girl saw.

The Wife commented that she had never seen so many men in a museum.  She was right.

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But we believe in gender balance, so we also dropped by Seneca Falls to visit the Women’s Rights National Park.  It’s the site of the 1848 conference that launched the suffrage movement (and, interestingly enough, the temperance movement).

The park itself is pretty small -- a reception building and welcome center, a rebuilt conference hall, a couple of plaques, and then some houses scattered around the town.  

We took The Girl’s picture standing by the sign outside, in front of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton park.  TG had done a report on Lucretia Mott for school this Spring, so we made sure to highlight any mentions of Mott when we found them.  We found plenty.

The exhibits are a little dated -- I’m guessing circa 1990 -- but had their moments.  The kids enjoyed a video asking kids in the 1970’s what they wanted to be when they grew up.  The girls mostly said they wanted to be Mommies or ballerinas, and the boys mostly wanted to be astronauts or athletes.  But TB and TG really liked the boy who announced that when he grew up, he wanted to be a turtle.

TG seemed to get the point that the museum was really for her, and she took to it.  She even got sworn in as a junior park ranger, complete with badge.  (Yes, she has an official badge allowing her to enforce women’s rights.  World, you have been warned.)  But I was also proud of how composed and non-defensive The Boy was.  I made a point of telling him, shortly before we left, that I was impressed that he understood that it was really about fairness, and that he shouldn’t take any of it personally.  I know grown men who haven’t figured that out.

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Western New York being Western New York, we had to see Niagara Falls.  If you stay on the American side, as we did, I’ll just make two points.  First, avoid the “welcome center” at all costs.  It’s the ugliest, seediest, nastiest, saddest looking caricature of Ugly America you will ever see.  Second, walk the bridge to Luna Island and stand right over the falls.  Totally worth it.  

Later, we caught the falls in Watkins Glen, which are pretty underrated.  If you get the chance, be sure to catch the ones by the post office.  They’re practically in one person’s backyard.

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On the way back from Niagara, we dropped by Rochester to catch a Red Wings game.  The Red Wings are the AAA farm team of the Minnesota Twins, and they have a spiffy newish stadium.

The games are different than they were back in the 80’s.  They’re much more family-friendly than they used to be, with t-shirt cannons and frisbee tosses between innings.  The night we went, Rod Carew was there signing autographs.  TW mentioned that when she heard the announcer say “Hall of Famer Rod Carew,” she thought of Adam Sandler’s Hannukah song.  (“He converted!”)  The Red Wings have not one, but two, mascots now, so we picked up a stuffed one for TG.  I even bought the requisite Genny Cream, because Rochester, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy a white hot, because self-respect.

Minor league ball is a fine, fine thing.  At twelve bucks a ticket, we were five rows from the field, about halfway between third and home.  The kids enjoyed the mascots, and scored a hat and a frisbee.  The Wings won, TB and I carried on a running commentary on the pitching, and the food was even good.  Score one for the old hometown.

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Smell is the sense most closely tied to memory.  

My Dad grew up in Memphis, and always enjoyed barbecue.  We stopped at an amazing barbecue place in Oneonta, called Brooks’.  It had an enormous active pit out back.

I’m not saying that I got a little tear-y when I smelled that distinctive barbecue scent again in Western New York.  I’m not saying that.  But I’m not saying I didn’t, either.