Arizona was a great place to grow up during the 1960s and 1970s. It was there and then that I made my first attempts to understand what it means to be a human being. I was young and often nervous, but I was smart and, most of the time, I paid attention to what was going on around me.

As preregistration rolls around next week, it’s worth giving a serious thought or two to the kind of courses you want to take, the kinds of professors you want to learn with, the kinds of ideas you want to wrestle with, the kinds of things you want to learn. In short, it’s a good time to take stock of the education you are getting at Georgetown.

Before anything else, a disclaimer: In this column, I speak for no one but myself. I do not speak for the Jesuit Community. Happily, others bear that weighty burden. I speak for Fr. Ryan Maher, S.J., Georgetown Class of 1982.

Last week, The Voice and THE HOYA (“GU Investigates Academic Culture,” Aug. 31, 2007, A1) published a link to the report of the Committee on Intellectual Life. That leak has certainly sparked some vigorous thinking and conversation in Hoya circles!