Testimony of UIL Students
“I approached the UIL advanced degree program with that I thought was a healthy disrespect for conventional academia. At 62, with a successful career under my belt, I did not feel it was necessary to spend years studying dead men’s theories. What I could not have predicted was how embedded my need for conventional authoritative validation would be. I spent two semesters desgining a thesis that was framed by others’ ideas and opinions. UIL’s first gift to me, transmitted directly by my provost, Renate Stendhal, was that my experience was sufficient source material for my thesis and dissertation work. What she reiterated in a hundered different ways was that I didn’t need to go to the library, my LIFE was the library. I could not have had a more responsive and meticulous provost than Renate Stendhal. I had hoped she would hold me to as high a standard as I hold for myself, and was sometimes breathless at her exactitude. She is the effortless embodiment of UIL’s educational philosophy”. Margaret (Margie) Adam, Ph.D., integrative counselor, Berkeley. Read the rest of this entry »
On our pilgrimage to the sites of Stein’s “mystery” novel, the impression of sadness, the all-pervasive dread of French country life deepened at the Hotel Pernollet. (Here, as the center of the world, on a postcard from the 80s.) Situated in the little town Belley, some 4 miles from Bilignin, the five-generation hotel had its heighday around 1930. Gertrude and Alice discovered it in the Guide des Gourmets and took to it. It did not matter that the owner, Mr. Pernollet, at first took Gertrude for a gypsy (with her flowing skirts and naked feet in sandals) and saw Alice as her maid. The gypsy and her maid had a good laugh about it. 
