Editorial
She's off to Oxford

	Allyssa Lamb
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There are so many good story lines, the mind races to single out just one.

University of Washington senior Allyssa Lamb has been named as one of 32 Rhodes Scholars from the United States. She'll enter Oxford University in England this October.

She is the third UW student to win the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship since 2000.

She carries a double major in classics and biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies. She reads ancient Greek, Latin, biblical Hebrew — and hieroglyphics.

She's African American.

She was raised by a single parent, with a lot of help from family and friends.

And one fact we especially like, her mother, Joan Lamb, began reading to Allyssa when she was a baby. Not that all of us could earn a 3.94 grade point average if only we had been read to early enough. But the image of mother and daughter growing and learning together is too delicious.

This is one proud moment for a lot of people. Lamb, 22, however, is not about to toot her own horn. As Seattle Times staff reporter J. Patrick Coolican reported, she planned to celebrate by doing a little more homework.

Why on Earth would someone want to study "dead languages" and old cultures in this age of Google and iPods?

As Lamb so deftly put it, they are a connection through the millennia to the shared "thoughts, feelings, experiences" of ancient peoples and those of us today. "We have to understand how we got to the point we are in the world today," she says.

During her two years at Oxford, Lamb, a Bothell High School graduate, plans to study religion in the Hellenistic period of Egypt.

After that, she expects to pursue a doctorate.

So, here is to the early family support, the planting of a love of learning, to inspiring teachers, and to fine, local academic institutions.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company