Beloved students, I greet you as 2010 rushes toward its eminent termination in what can only be called an amazing endeavor. Much like an exhausted athlete who is spent but rises on sheer determination to reach the goal, so 2010 is also running on sheer determination to finish its course with ardent and gracious aplomb. Truly, 2010 has been one amazing year, has it not? On a global level, you have borne witness to a quaking planet—at times violently so. You have seen volcanoes and oil eruptions from Earth's core, tornadoes in unlikely locales, drought, flooding, unprecedented destruction from monsoons, receding glaciers and disappearing ice fields, to mention only the obvious.

You have also witnessed the currencies around the world tested in their strength and seen institutionalized debt push economies to the brink of disaster. You've seen governments in disarray, futile wars with senseless human losses, corrupt financial and political practices, a collapse in real estate values around the world, economic strangulation, and even instances of election tampering. What a strange and amazingly undomesticated picture the conventional reality can paint. As you look on that evolving canvas, what do you see? How has your own mind interpreted the many incredible images it has had to entertain in the past eleven months?