A fan of Ira Glass and his weekly This American Life broadcasts (LaDonna, anyone??), I haven't been able to shake the story told in last week's How I got into College episode. The one about the Bosnian student who believed a certain teacher's reaction to an essay he wrote was the catalyst for the series of occurances that ultimately led him to success.

As a writer of memoirs, I mention a lof of people in the course of my writing. As a no-name author, I've been able to do this with very few of these people even knowing they are mentioned. I have a very small readership, see.