"In some ways, I did a lot of growing up during my time at Woodberry. Mandatory evening study halls, supervised by masters (as we referred to our teachers), were a major irritant and were absolutely vital to my emergence as a decent student who could aspire to making it into a decent college. We read constantly, even over the summer (I thought I would never make it through O.E. Rølvaag's Giants in the Earth), we memorized (I can still recite long passages of "Thanatopsis"), we took tests and exams (all the time, it seemed to me), we had math and lab science courses that drove me crazy, and we competed on those green, frequently muddy, athletic fields all three seasons of every year (football and winter and spring track for me)."