Meet the New English Majors, Pt. 1

~Anna Donnella (’15)

The Class of 2016 has declared, and the English department is now 30 brains smarter. We wanted to welcome each of the new majors, Miscellany style, with a mini-spotlight on each, so we asked the questions and they answered. Here is Round 1 of the new majors, and check back in the June issue for Round 2.

Here are the questions we asked each new major:

1. Why English?

2. What is one thing the English department needs to know about you?

3. What fictional character would you spend the day with and what would you do?

Noah Bunnell

1. “Thought is subjective,” they say, “incommunicable, irreducible”; I’ll take that challenge. “No good can come of frolicking in lexical wonderlands,” they say, “you should do something that can actually effect change (and make money)”; Naysayers gonna nay.

2. Of my sundry addictions, listmaking strikes a close second to reading. For a while, I compiled a list of books I wanted to read. When it eclipsed one thousand I realized the fruitlessness of the task, and picked up a book at random. 10/10 would do again.

3. With Billy Pilgrim I would discuss metaphysics on Tralfamadore– naturally, we would witness all eternity.

Lexi Norvet

1. Because life is too short to study Price Theory.

2. This is pretty embarrassing but I’ve never read any Joyce and sometimes I pretend I have.

3. I would love to spend a day arbitrarily censoring soldiers’ letters home with Captain Yossarian.

Mina Wolf

1. I chose to major in English because most of the classes that I’d like to take in the future are English classes. I figured that was a pretty good indicator.

2. The English Department needs to know that I’m upholding the party for new majors as a precedent and fully expect there to be delicious food at all future department events.

3. I’d like to spend the day gossiping and being sassy with Lizzie Bennet.

Alex Caulfield

1. I’d like to learn to write well…and today when we spent 30 minutes of class analyzing the opening eight or so lines of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I was in HEAVEN.

2. The English department should know that…I also love art history.

3. If I could, I would spend the day with Hercule Poirot from Agatha Christie’s Poirot mystery series because I am in love with his eccentric and brilliant mind.

Josh Wickert

1. Initially I was going to major in something like math or physics, but I thought of English during Winter and Spring break after I realized I had spent all my free time reading the stack of books now sitting next to me and was currently in the middle of The Tempest by William Shakespeare.

2. If I ever own a house, at least one of the rooms will be devoted to being a library.

3. Dante from the Divine Comedy. I would discuss views on humanity and the world.

Wren Wells

1. I chose English because I can just sit around for hours reading and talking about books.

2. My goal in life is to do the thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.

3. Primrose Squarp (Everything on a Waffle). We would cook and then have an epic feast.

Claire Edgley

1. I love literature and reading the kinds of fiction genres that wouldn’t really qualify as literature.

2. My favorite type of literature is 19th century British: Austen, Dickens, Hardy, and the Bronte sisters.

3. I would like to ride with Gandalf on his horse to Rivendell.

Wilson Josephson

1. English is the only subject that has been consistently entertaining & exciting for me. It also seemed like the best opportunities for laughter among all the majors; authors can be funny, but it seems that scientific findings or philosophical treatises or historical documents rarely are.

2. I make wicked pancakes.

3. Bradamante. We’d get ice cream; it can’t hurt to take time off from being badass.

Peter Alexander

1. Last-minute decision.

2. Too much time on Twitter has eroded my ability for think for longer than 140 characters.

3. I would coax Gregor Samsa out from underneath his couch and give him a hug.

Mikayla Coulombe

1. I chose English because reading and writing for a living sounds awesome. Also, Matt Damon was an English major.

2. The English Department needs to know that I am one of many who has dreamt of becoming a famous author since I was little, so any help with employment after graduation will be greatly appreciated!

3. Definitely Sydney Carton. We would wander the streets of London and discuss the meaning of Life.

Trent Elmore

1. I’ve always loved reading stories, so why not just do that for my homework?

2. I love birdwatching.

3. Peregrine Took. Live the hobbit lifestyle with some Took mischief thrown in.
 

Claire Pennington

1. In some ways, studying English is like the cheater’s version of studying other disciplines– especially humanities like History and Philosophy. Why learn about the Thirty Years War from some dense Historical text fraught with too many proper nouns and footnotes when you could read Mother Courage instead? And while Hemingway won’t define Existentialism for you with pages on pages of technical abstractions, he’ll let you know what it might feel like to believe in something like that, which might well be more useful.

2. Working alone on second Laird late one Sunday night, I heard hissing, crackling noises from the attic. I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or disappointed to discover the heater running on 3rd. As an English department in a cozy old building where the doors creak and the steps are worn, our lack of a friendly attic ghoul seems like such a missed opportunity.

3. Save the Date: Oedipa Mas and the great post-horn hunt. San Fransisco, CA. BYOB

Casey Short

1. Because I’ve been trying to read books since before I could talk and trying to write them since before I could hold a pencil.

2. My favorite book. Which is The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. This is essential information.

3. Howl’s Moving Castle’s Sophie. Ice cream, witty conversation and magical shenanigans.

Sami Saltzman

1. “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head”–Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried. I’m just out here searching for story-truth.

2. Contrary to popular belief, I actually am over five feet tall. Five feet and one-fourth of an inch, thank you very much.

3. The speaker from Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” We’d cool in the peppermint wind.

Madeline King

1. I see so much beauty in literary analysis, and I enjoy English more than nearly any other subject.

2. I feel as though I haven’t read a thing…

3. I might tag along after Jamie (from The Homeward Bounders, by Diana Wynne Jones).