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	<title>Life. Love. Faith.</title>
	<link>http://willpenner.com/blog</link>
	<description>musings, reflections, and ruminations</description>
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		<title>The Best Compliment Ever</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today is my 40th birthday, and it&#8217;s been a good one. In many ways it was like any other day. I went to work (though, interestingly, many students asked if I were leaving early, if they were going to have a substitute teacher, etc.&#8211;just wishful thinking on their part); I attended Daniel&#8217;s open house; and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=589</link>
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		<title>The Short, Hot Summer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This summer has been a whirlwind. It came and went much more quickly than I had expected. Several of the projects I had hoped to knock out were left untouched, which is a little disappointing. However, it&#8217;s the first summer in a long, long time when I haven&#8217;t felt overwhelmed. Busy, but not overwhelmed. A [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=580</link>
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		<title>On Starting Over</title>
		<description><![CDATA[After 85 days of BP&#8217;s oil rig spilling crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the cap is finally on. That&#8217;s good, but it&#8217;s definitely not good enough. I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about starting over recently—mostly about money, but also about mistakes. On one hand, we live in a society that allows people to declare [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=572</link>
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		<title>The Financial Aid Bait and Switch</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I think Lucy grew up and went to work for Millsaps College in the Admissions and Financial Aid departments—and I feel like Charlie Brown. Part of the reason I asked Devin to apply to so many colleges (31: apparently a Fairview High School record) was so that he&#8217;d have lots of options. After visiting a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=569</link>
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		<title>Beyond Carrot and Stick: Cognitive Surplus</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Jim Hancock shared an interesting article from Wired magazine called &#8220;Cognitive Surplus: The Great Spare-Time Revolution.&#8221; First, I like the description of intrinsic motivation: We have a biological drive. We eat when we’re hungry, drink when we’re thirsty, have sex to satisfy our carnal urges. We also have a second drive—we respond to rewards and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=549</link>
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		<title>Please Say It Ain&#8217;t So</title>
		<description><![CDATA[According to this article in the Waco Tribune-Herald, Danny Passmore was arrested for aggravated sexual assault of a child. I always get sad when I hear about these kinds of things&#8211;mostly for the victims. I&#8217;ve worked with young people as a teacher and youth minister my entire adult life, and I see the devastating effects [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=545</link>
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		<title>Diapers to Diplomas</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Devin, our oldest son, graduated with honors from Fairview High School on Friday night. I&#8217;ve attended many graduation ceremonies as a teacher and youth minister, but this was my first as a parent—and it was wonderful. My brother, Ted, and his wife came, and all of Devin&#8217;s grandparents, as well—so we just made a whole [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=541</link>
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		<title>Interesting Lessons</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I was going back through some of my notes from our college search process with Devin, and here are a few things we were told that I found interesting: First, regarding athletic scholarships: 118 colleges play NCAA Division I football, and 238 play Division III. Certainly, we hear more about the NCAA teams, because so [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=532</link>
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		<title>Millsaps</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We decided to visit one more school this weekend: Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Devin received a partial academic scholarship there early on, but we never heard from any of the football coaches&#8211;so it kind of fell off our radar. Come to find out, the coaching staff has changed. The new head coach just arrived [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=527</link>
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		<title>Narrowing the Choices</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So it&#8217;s been more than a month since Devin and I took our little college tour around the northeast and midwest—which was just incredible in almost every way. We&#8217;ve narrowed down the leading contenders—schools that really want him and that he&#8217;s really interested in attending—from our original 31 to about five: Lycoming in Pennsylvania Ohio [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://willpenner.com/blog/?p=523</link>
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