We are school with academic rigor. I’ve never particularly liked this descriptor – perhaps in part because the only other context in which I think of the word rigor is “rigor mortis.” And, maybe unfairly, I associate those two instances of rigor. Academic rigor makes me think of stiffness, of calcification, of the canon (and nothing but)… and that’s not The Mountain School.

Yet, I want to lay claim to the idea that “academic rigor” reaches for: the sense that academics are present, challenging, engaging, necessary, and more.