Today@Dal

From Wednesday's Chronicle Herald:

It is a good thing that table etiquette doesn’t make or break a Rhodes Scholarship.

If it did, Michael Mackley may not be smiling quite as much as he is these days.

The Dartmouth man, 21, learned Saturday he will be heading to the University of Oxford next year with a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

Mackley, a Dalhousie University student, was in Moncton over the weekend for the final steps of the selection process, which included a multi-course meal Friday night with the Rhodes panel and eight other finalists from the Maritimes.

“I sat down and thought, ‘There are way more forks at this table than I accounted for,’” he said in an interview Monday. “I certainly did not have the best table manners in the group, so I was worried that was going to work against me.”

Somehow, dessert and dinner forks aside, he made it through to the next step Saturday morning.

“I remember walking into my interview the next day, sitting down at the head of the conference room and I remember the first thing I said was, ‘I’m so glad there’s no cutlery.’”

Read the rest of this article online.