What is your quest?

New semester, new students. In response to the prompt "What is your quest?" they said

• to seek the Holy Grail (most popular response, 5)
• pass this class / to complete all my assignments / master C++ / achieve all the knowledge
• find riches / find El Dorado
• vengeance
• sleep (x3)
• to have a good day / be happy / live my best life
• Je veux apprendre le français.
• to follow that star
• survive
• self-actualization

This is a good variety of goals and I'm glad the students are thinking at such a wide range of timescales and achievement levels. Hopefully everyone got good sleep over the weekend and is ready to jump into some math tomorrow.

This post's theme word is obtrude (v), "to impose one's ideas/opinions", or "to thrust forward or intrude." The process of teaching is one of a series of obtruding lectures and enticing examples.

Wolfwalkers

 Wolfwalkers is an animated film from the same director as The Secret of Kells. It has a similar sort of art and line style, with movements easily flowing across the screen in a way I found very aesthetically pleasing. You can read the plot summary on Wikipedia, so I'll just give some viewing notes:

If possible, you should view this on a bedsheet in a neighbor's backyard.

Cover your delicious blood with skin, and cover that with clothing, then bugspray. (You will still be bitten on the face, and hands, and through your socks. This is the destiny of the delicious. Your itchy discomfort will be offset by the bug-free experience of neighbor kids.)

At the appropriate time --- and trust me, you will know the appropriate time --- you should absolutely howl along with the onscreen wolves. Everyone else, on their lawn chairs and picnic blankets, will absolutely do this, especially if < 7 years old.

Five stars, highly recommended. Not entirely historically-accurate.

This post's theme word is eidolon (n), "an idealized form" or "a phantom". The animation smoothly showed transition between physical humans, eidolon scents and spirits, and wolves.