Class

My class is small now, as it usually is this time in the semester. There are 13 students actively attending class, and one who lost her fiance a month before the wedding whom I have not seen for a while. She says she will be back to class on Weds. For some reason, she has lots of legal business to transact with her would-be in laws. Perhaps they had bought a home or something. In any case, there will be a lot to do to help her try to catch up. She refuses to take a W or an Incomplete because she has been accepted to the University for next semester, on the condition that she completes all the classes she is taking now suitably.
But I have been speaking with each of the students about his or her research topic, and I am especially pleased that I helped one of them to choose just the right book and film for him. This student is from Russia. He is an excellent, exceedingly bright student, who wants to transfer to the philosophy department at the university next year.
Given his interests and nationality, I recommended Stanislaus Lem's novel, Solaris, and Tarkovsky's film of the same title. I knew he would find them congenial, and he does. He is really quite taken with the novel especially, but had never heard of Lem before I mentioned the book. Since it is such a philosophical work (actually, both the movie and the book are), I thought he would like them. Perhaps this is the best suggestion I've ever made to a student of a topic to research.