In the autumn of 1962, I began my junior year at Colorado College. Academic life was challenging — a semester of four or five classes meeting several times a week. Student life was circumscribed by rules: family-style dinners with tablecloths and candlelight four nights a week, a strictly enforced curfew in women’s dorms with a sign-out/sign-in book. It was, in every sense, a different time and place. Yet change was in the air, in countless ways that we could not begin to imagine.

That October, I remember gathering a group of students to complain to Dean Lew Worner about the volume of “stuff” we were to produce. We griped that there was too much quantity and not enough quality. I recall having 22 papers and projects due that semester. Glenn Brooks was my advisor, and I no doubt grumbled to him as well. Three days later, I was in the infirmary with an acute case of “mono.” Did I prove my point or negatemy case? I will never know.

That weekend, the Cuban missile crisis exploded into the news. Fellow political science majors came to the infirmary to share with me the rumor that Colorado Springs was the second-highest priority target because of NORAD. I went to sleep one night certain that I would die before morning — either from Russian missiles or raging mono. I didn’t much care which — I just wanted to get it over with. Both crises passed, and I went home for several weeks to recuperate. I came back to campus one week before finals, dropped only one class, and received my highest GPA to that point.

“	As an alumna and the mother of two CC graduates, Kristie ’91 and Jennifer ’96, I have come to believe that the Block Plan changes lives.”
	– Marla Kauerz ’64

In the autumn of 1987, our middle daughter, Kristie ’91, enrolled as a freshman at CC. We moved her into the co-ed dorm (with men on the same floor!) — that had few rules and no visible adults. She was recovering — from mono. Two days into her first block, she called home, too sick to continue, and came home for four days. We returned at the end of that first week so she could meet with her professor, Joseph Pickle. She wondered if she could catch up. She had already missed reading and discussing two books. He replied kindly, “If you were my daughter and you had missed four days, I would advise you to drop the block and start over with Block 2.” She did so. Glenn Brooks was her advisor as well.

As an alumna and the mother of two CC graduates, Kristie and Jennifer ’96, I have come to believe that the Block Plan changes lives. All three of us received superior educations. My years at CC were different in virtually every way from those of my daughters. For me, the academic pace was intense but perhaps without clear focus. There was a constant struggle to determine where best to put one’s time and effort. Kristie and Jennie, on the other hand, still basically live their lives “on the Block Plan” — with focus, discipline, and the belief that one can accomplish almost anything in just over three weeks.