Ideas

I recently handed back essays to some students privileged enough to attend what's been named America's Top Dream College*. Concerned that they were nearing the end of their freshman year and that few of them could write an essay with an idea in it, I asked them the obvious question: What's an idea? After trying -- and failing -- to describe the word, one of them ventured, "It's just that the word idea so perfectly captures ... the word idea."

*NYU, for the 4th year in a row, according to a survey by the Princeton Review