ABSTRACT
Mr. Eldon Novak, his wife Susan, and their daughter Michelle, all from Broken Bow, Nebraska (pop. 3979), enter my office and introduce themselves. Whenever such visitors arriveprospective honors students, sometimes with younger siblings, and usually one or both parents-I’m inevitably reminded that my office furniture is all secondhand, straight out of inventory. The warehouse is open on Wednesday; maybe this week I’ll go look for some better used chairs. While we talk, my western wildlife screensaver changes from ringtail cats to newly hatched white pelicans, to a magnificent wolf portrait, and a progression of other fauna. Visitors often watch these creatures, paying little attention, it seems, to my sales pitch. Once in a while the telephone rings, interrupting our conversation. While I try to get off the phone quickly, my guests scan the wall art-a wax model of a dissected human torso showing parasites in every organ; a Robert Weaver painting of the road from Keystone to Roscoe; a fish print (made by spreading ink on a real fish) given to me by a former student; a large watercolor landscape, a gift from a West Coast friend who flew to North Platte, Nebraska, then rented a fourwheel drive in order to reach an isolated headwater spring so she could paint the scene from life. I promise to call someone back and hang up. We return to the subject at hand: why this
particular high school senior, who grew up on the bleak but starkly beautiful northern prairies, and has a composite ACT score of 35, should come to the University of Nebraska instead of Harvard, Southern Cal, Stanford, or Baylor. Baylor? Warm and safe. Sleet hits the window. We talk briefly about the weather. In the grain belt, conversations that fail to mention the weather are somehow unfinished. Then I return to my sales job, selling my institution, my department, and a major in biological sciences. From somewhere two floors down comes the sound of construction. Did I remember to sweep up that large dead roach from the hallway before these people arrived? Probably not. We don’t notice the roaches much anymore unless they’re in our coffee cups. This is, after all, a biology building. But why UNL instead of Southern Cal or Baylor?
