Fall 2010 has been filled with thoughtful questions from my students in my two critical thinking courses, my two discursive courses, and my one developmental writing course. My students have been working with, among many other things, eighteenth-century travel literature, lexicography, sentence structure, how an author's purpose and audience shape an author's writing choices, and how Johnathan Swift's proposer in A Modest Proposal uses logical fallacies. I am going to miss these classes.

I continue to work on several projects that explore aspects of national and cultural identity in the eighteenth century. Editing work remains one of my interests as I continue to enjoy my work as the University Thesis and Dissertation editor and my work as a foundation communications editor. Although I do not look forward to saying good-bye to my classes, I do look forward to the promise of time the holiday break holds for my own scholarship and, if I am lucky, some time outside on my bike, in the frigid Pacific on my bodyboard, in the mountains on my snowshoes, and some time with friends and family around copious hot cups.