‘Twas the night before the Map final, when all through the Hilltop,
Nervous SFS freshmen were studying, though they wished they could stop.
Their Sporcle quizzes were aced, all filled out carefully,
From Armenia with Yerevan, to Rome in Italy.

College, NHS and MSB kids were nestled, all snug in their beds,
No visions of wind patterns danced in their heads.
And you with your Atlas and I with my notes,
Were readying our brains for whatever exam JRA wrote.

When down on Healy Lawn there arose such a clatter,
I rushed from Lau to see what was the matter.
Out to the lawn I flew like a flash,
And breathlessly asked if this was about Map class.

When what to my exhausted eyes did appear,
Well, I don’t go to lecture, but I think that’s the professor standing here.
In a downpour like the summer monsoons, his capitals they came,
And he shouted with glee as he called them by name:

“Now Belize has Belmopan, now Hungary has Budapest,
On Angola with Luanda, on Romania with Bucharest!
From Russia’s long history to Greece’s financial descent,
You must know it all – er, at least 70 percent!”

So away to the files of lecture captures I flew,
To learn geographical features and geopolitics, too.
As I drew on my maps, my mind was spinning around –
We have to know rivers and seas, too? Are there no bounds?

Ukrainian elections ran through my head,
And I realized that tonight I wouldn’t be going to bed.
Reardon-Anderson, meanwhile, went straight to his work.
“What time is it in Manama when it’s 7:00 in New York?”

“In the United States South, how do voting trends go?”
“In which direction do the Trade Winds blow?”
“What are the similarities in the conflicts in Nigeria and Sudan?”
“Why does the US need to maintain relations with Kazakhstan?”

And he displayed iClicker questions up on a screen,
Then showed us the right answers, lit up in green.
Then he left Healy lawn, and went toward Red Square,
I stood all alone, feeling so unprepared.

But I heard him exclaim, as he walked to the ICC,
“The subtropical highs are north and south of the equator at 30 degrees!”

Photos: theodora.com