Done!

That's it -- we're done. The 80 scholars and 50 honorable mentions for the Udall class of 2009 have been chosen.

Sue and I were the last to finish, thanks to being given two second read piles. We got half of our final pile done before the traditional end-of-reading Celebratory Mexican Dinner (where Ann Brown may or may not have consumed a margarita bigger than her head....photo evidence to come later....), and then everyone else taunted us as we headed back to the Canyon Room to finish reading and make decisions.

Phew. I'm beat. 94 files is a lot. Of those 94, 78 were on first read -- of those 78, 13 ended up as Scholars and 9 are honorable mentions. 4 of the 16 second reads are scholars, and the other 12 are honorable mentions -- so we had a hand in choosing 17 Udall Scholars and 21 honorable mentions. Or, to put it differently, we helped give away $92,350 in scholarship money. Not bad for four days' work.

This won't be the last blog post. Look out in the coming days for a celebratory final post from Tucson, and I have promised Jane & Mia a long post about how I read files and think about each question on the application, which may end up being the most helpful post to facreps.

But for now? G'night.