Honor Points

Well, Shannon and I just returned from six days in Paris (France, not Texas). We were not on vacation, but were debriefing one of our student summer missions projects. They were in North Africa for six weeks and then spent several days in Paris with us at the end of the trip. What a great time and a great group of students!

Funny story:
Several of our male students and interns have developed a game they call "Honor Points." Each player begins with 100 honor points. You can give some of your points to another player if he does something worthy. For example, at one point during the trip one of the team members was offered 10 honor points to attempt to catch a pigeon. It is really just a funny way to pass the time.

At any rate, we were sightseeing one day and happened to be standing on a bridge overlooking the Seine River. A couple of the guys got together, pooled all of their points, and offered Marty Scott (one of our interns) nearly 200 honor points to jump in the river. This was the most points anybody had ever offered in the history of the game, as far as we know.

The best part is that Marty appeared to seriously consider the offer, despite the fact that the river was probably near the freezing point, the fall was probably about sixty feet, and there was no easy exit point at the side of the river. Put another way: if the fall didn't kill him, the water would have. I of course told Marty that there was no way he was allowed to jump in that river (but then later gave him a hard time for chickening out, of course).

At any rate, that's the sort of energy and willingness to try new things that students and young adults often have. Granted, it can be tinged with a lack of commonsense at times, but still...If they can stay alive long enough, they might just change the world.