8/31: kaiti

I met a former student, Kaiti, and her spouse for lunch today; they live three hours north of Conway, but they were in town for the morning and early afternoon.  I hadn't seen her in four years, despite various hoped-for and sometimes almost-accomplished meet-ups during that time.  It was great to catch up with her.  It also made me so happy when she said--with no prompting from me--that she feels like she uses Latin every day:  although she doesn't work with the language directly anymore, she said that in her nursing studies and work she relies on the systematic thinking that learning Latin developed in her.  Her spouse wasn't there for that part of the conversation, but when he joined us he happened to mention that Kaiti often tells him that she feels like she uses her Classics degree all the time because of how it has trained her to think--so to me that suggests that she wasn't just saying that to make me feel good about what I do, that it's really truly the case.