Dear Professor,

For us, lowly students at a great institution where volumes of wisdom are dispensed so readily, it is often difficult to keep ourselves anchored in the rapidly changing world outside of the tranquility of our bricked Yard.

To that end, as well as for the furtherance of my complete education, I have been engaged in particularly rigorous fieldwork of late which has prevented me from engaging myself fully with the coursework in your class. I should like to interject that my particular digression into this field has been quite unexpected and certainly does not indicate that I am taking your course lightly.

One of the great unexplained sociological phenomena of industrial and, yes, even post-industrial American society is the overwhelming importance of professional athletic competition to the mechanics of daily societal interaction. While many would dismiss such a concern as outside the bounds of traditional and rigorous inquiry I feel that it is precisely for that reason that an investigation of this phenomenon is vital.

You may be aware that the local professional baseball club, the so-called "Red Sox," is at this moment engaged in a struggle with a squad from the City of New York, the "Mets," for the championship of their baseball league. Beyond trying to decipher the meaning of this arcane terminology, there are substantive sociological considerations I would like to investigate.

To that end, I have been observing each of these matches quite carefully. I have frequented the places where their resolution is the only subject of communal discourse. While more often than not, such research takes me to various taverns and other places of socially deviant activity, I have have pursued my inquiry wherever it has taken me.

In fact, I even went to the local site of this ritual contest. While obtaining entry was difficult, diligence and my scholastic credentials were sufficient to allow me access. I say this only to illustrate the intensity of my study. If I am qualified to judge any of your impressive academic work, my approbation would fix upon the intensity of your efforts to track down the truth wherever it may lead. I hope you can appreciate my own desire to do a thorough job.

So far, my research has not come to full fruition, but I anticipate that I may be able to wrap it up tonight. Accordingly, I will not be submitting the assigned paper tomorrow but I will, of course, do so once I have completed my outside exercise.

Yours in scholarly fellowship,