English commencement… we need you, Jon Stewart!

Long story short- the UC Berkeley English department was all set to have an author speak at our commencement on May 23rd. However, unions have decided to picket graduation to get some sort of political statement across to the administration… which means that our speaker will not cross the picket lines and we, therefore, get screwed (for lack of a more eloquent term).

Here’s where Jon Stewart comes in: we want him to be our graduation speaker! So far, our facebook group has gotten 320 members in less than 24 hours. We want Jon Stewart to be the crowning glory of our graduation ceremony! We’ve offered couches, cookies, bribes, our first born children (that was my contribution), and naming our graduation after him. What better way to show what he believes in than to speak about it to the up-and-coming leaders of the future?

To help us out, join the facebook group HERE…  and INVITE YOUR FRIENDS!! Tweet it, blog it, share it, whatever it takes.

We’ve all spent 4+ years slaving over Milton, Shakespeare, metaphors, irony, semantics, Proust, and everything in between… not to mention the countless hours spent writing impressive, handcrafted essays. We deserve this!!

See, he even looks like an English major!

A walk down (academic) memory lane…

My “things I learned in college” post got me to thinking about all of the academic things I’ve learned in college… which got me to thinking about all of the papers I’ve written. Since I started taking English classes first semester freshman year, I’ve been writing lots of papers every year. When my MacBook bit the dust, I lost some of them, but here’s an attempt to remember them. Enjoy the ridiculousness of my academic career!

• Anti-semitism in Merchant of Venice (This was either my first or second college paper, for Shakespeare. It was awful.)
• Metaphorical significance of gold in McTeague
• Imagery and Dichotomy in Paradise Lost (My first A paper in college!)
• Significance of Grice’s Maxims in Alice in Wonderland
• Consonance and Assonance in John Donne’s “The Flea”
• “Disillusionment in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’”
• “The Debate over California’s MGM Plan” (term paper for American Studies 10)
• “Burgeoning Cities and Growing Feminism: Women in Literature”
• “Procession and Contrasts: Milton’s Flower Catalogue in Lycidas“
• “Microcosms of the City in Venus in Boston and The Quaker City“
• Wasting time in The Screwtape Letters
• Significance of Plants in The Duchess of Malfi
• Interplay of Images and Language in Shel Silverstein’s poetry
• “Connect and Disconnect: The Active Roles of Inheritance and Disinheritance in The Crying of Lot 49“
• Sensationalism and Racism in Reports of the Richmond High Gang Rape (this was REALLY depressing to research and write)
• “Sight and Similes: Allegories, Imagery, Winged Creatures and Christ in the Climax of Milton’s Samson Agonistes”
• Conversion of Male-Female Relationships to Fraternal Relationships in LOTR
• Work in Progress 1- Significance of “Excitement” and rhetoric in Charles G. Finney’s Sermons/Writing
• WIP 2- THESIS- Schadenfreude as the overarching popularizing element in RTV and social media

Looking back, this list (albeit incomplete) looks pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. It’s nice to be able to look back on all of the physical products of my hard work here at Cal, and see all of the ideas, no matter how out there, that I’ve come up with and managed to turn into papers!