Senior sems are upon us

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Annie Brown

It’s that time of the semester: while all of us are frantically trying to get work done for this week and next week, which is finals week, many of our seniors on campus are finishing up and presenting their senior seminars and capstones.

All McDaniel seniors are required to do a culminating project in their major(s). Some departments call these projects senior seminars (commonly known as senior sem(s) or sem) and some call them capstones. Whatever they’re called, all of these projects require a tremendous amount of work, writing, and research.

I know a lot of seniors who presented their senior sems yesterday, and since they’re generally open for anyone on campus to attend, I had the chance to attend my friend Hanna’s presentation.

Hanna, who is an English major, talked about the rhetoric of Allies (McDaniel’s Gay-Straight Alliance) in her presentation. She discussed how Allies uses rhetorical strategies when communicating with their club members that are different from those they use to communicate with the campus community at large. Learning about this binary was fascinating, and Hanna did a fantastic job researching and presenting her project.

I’m very glad I got to attend Hanna’s sem presentation. Since she’s my friend, I was happy that I was able to go support her. And since I’m an English major who also has a strong interest in rhetoric, it was great for me to see what a senior sem presentation that focuses on rhetoric can be like. The thing that I love about rhetoric is that it can take practically any topic involving communication and analyze it in incredibly interesting ways. While senior sem is a long, daunting, and intense process, I’m finding myself looking forward to my own at the moment. My senior sem will give me the opportunity to research something I am (hopefully) fascinated by and share that fascination with others.

I don’t remember the last time I was this busy…

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Annie Brown

This is been one of the busiest weeks of my life in recent memory. (I know I’ve had weeks just as busy if not more so, but I try to suppress those details!)

I’ve spent the past week laying out a 12-page print issue of the McDaniel Free Press to commemorate the graduating class of 2013. It’s been a lot of work, and being doing it pretty much on my own, because I have the right combination of skills and available time for the job.

I’ve had to sacrifice a lot of my personal and even academic life this week to work on such a big project, but there have been some advantages to it. I’ve known how to use the basics of InDesign, the program we use to do layout, since the end of my junior year of high school, but I now have a better grasp on InDesign than I’ve ever had before. And yes, this is relevant. A lot of places that want to hire English majors for jobs and internships want the people they’re hiring to have familiarity with Photoshop, Illustrator, and/or InDesign, so having the skills that I have is a great addition to my resume.

So if you have any interest in getting a career with an English major immediately after taking college, I strongly advice you to get a feel for these programs. Courses like Editing and Desktop Publishing offered at McDaniel can help you learn them, but some practical experience is also useful. It’s also difficult to get into this class until your junior year, so if you do come to McDaniel and you want to learn these skills, come join the art staff of the Free Press! You’ll get some practical knowledge, and with enough people participating, no one person has to take on the entire layout by herself!

English major events galore!

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Annie Brown

The English department is busy this month, so it’s an exciting time to be an English major!

On Thursday, this year’s issue of McDaniel’s literary magazine, Contrast, was finally unveiled! Despite the fact that the magazine did not show up (the printer did not deliver the shipment in 48 hours as promised), the event was successful. Harrison House was full of students, professors, and even family members of those published. People read their published submissions as a slideshow of the issue’s artwork cycled behind them. There was also food–the brownies were delicious!

Last night, the English department, in conjunction with the Honors Program, hosted a literary masquerade. The whole campus was invited to come dressed as their favorite literary characters. I went as Hermione Granger, since I had a Gryffindor scarf left over from my archetypes and Harry Potter presentation. Some of my favorite costumes of the evening included Edgar Allan Poe, Queequeg (from Moby-Dick), Violet Beauregarde (from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and Nancy Drew.

There are still more fun English events to come!

This Tuesday, students from Dr. Kathy Mangan’s poetry class will be reading their poetry aloud at Carroll Arts Center. I’m hoping to go if I can find time and some friends to make the walk to the arts center with me.

This coming Monday, the English department, along with McDaniel’s Center for Experience and Opportunity (CEO) will host a panel of alumni discussing what they’ve done with their English degrees. I haven’t yet made up my mind as to what I’ll do once I graduate, so I’m looking forward to some insight and networking.

Next Tuesday, April 23, Shakespeare in the Square will take place in Red Square to honor the birthday of William Shakespeare. McDaniel’s improv troupe, Dangersauce, will perform a comedic version of a Shakespearean play, and other students will read or reenact works of Shakespeare of their choice. It should be fun, and I might try to find a sonnet of Shakespeare that I like to read aloud.

Having such an active English department makes me happy to be an English major at McDaniel!

Admitted Students Day

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Amber Slater

Today was the first of two days for admitted students on campus, and I spent some time talking to prospective students about both our study abroad programs and the English department. After talking to so many people, I found myself repeating a few nuggets of knowledge to pretty much everyone, which I would like to share here:

There seems to be this misconception that studying abroad will make you fall behind, and that’s just not true. I was just a minor in Spanish before I left for Costa Rica, but I picked up so much Spanish credit while I was abroad that I only needed to take a few classes here at McDaniel to finish up the major upon my return. The key is planning with your adviser and the International Programs Office to make sure that your credits will transfer.

Don’t put yourself in a box. We really love hearing students say that they are undecided at Admitted Students Day because they will most likely explore various fields of study and student organizations before organically coming upon the best fit. I talked to students who did not feel that they could study abroad or take writing classes because of the major they had chosen, but I really encourage exploring all options for study, especially when we have to fulfill the McDaniel Plan anyway!

You can combine areas of study to fit your needs. I met some students who had interests that spanned across a couple of our majors, such as English, Communications, and Cinema. It can feel daunting when you are looking at the information for all of our different majors and minors, but it is pretty easy to study all the things you love by doing dual majors or taking on a minor. Be sure to talk to professors in all the departments you are interested in because they have probably had students with the same skill sets and will know from experience how to accommodate your interests.

Happy Admitted Students Day! We will be holding another one in one week on Sunday, April 14.

Papers and Projects and Presentations (Oh My!)

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Annie Brown

I love college and I love McDaniel college. But one of my least favorite things ever is coming back to campus after Thanksgiving break to wrap up fall semester. I have a lot of things that I need to work on over the next two and a half weeks. For the most part, these papers and projects aren’t so bad on their own, but because there’s so many of them, they’re all too overwhelming. But since I do have a lot of neat things to work on, here’s a rundown of what those things are.

For Approaches to Everyday Discourse, I have to write two more papers, the first of which is due tomorrow. In this paper I’m doing a genre study of articles appearing in popular news sources that are written about Facebook. Doing a genre study of this nature involves reading a lot of these sorts of articles; my paper requires me to read and analyze 20 articles selected by my professor, but in a true genre study, you can expect to read dozens more samples of whatever you’re analyzing to find shared features of a given genre.

My final paper for Discourse will involve a topic of my choice. I plan on doing research on the rhetoric of internet memes (particularly Advice Animals) and analyzing them as a genre in addition to observing what stories they tell and what it is about them that we as internet users relate to them so well.

For The Hero’s Journey, I have two projects due Monday. The first will involve a paper and a presentation analyzing the hero’s journey in a work of my choice. Though I’m not a huge fan of Powerpoint, it will probably in my best interest to make one to capture my classmates’ attentions and help them understand the movie better. My project will be about the movie Stardust. Other students in my class have presented on Across the Universe, Iron Man, and Pilgrim’s Progress, to name a few examples. My second project is supposed to be a creative project in a medium of my choice that describes my own hero’s journey. I’ll also be presenting this in class. One girl in my class who already presented described her hero’s journey in terms of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavors, which was really creative and funny.

In my Grammar and Usage class, I have to give a partner presentation in addition to doing a take-home final. The presentation will involve my partner and I discussing the grammar of the German language and how it relates to and differs from English grammar. My partner and I have taken German for years, so even though that will make the project easier for us, we’re still excited for it because we think German is a neat language and we want to share it with others.

Lastly, for The Nature of Science, I’m working with a group of three guys on a project that has involved us designing an experiment the involves some combination of sticks, boxes, balls, and string, conducting and analyzing the experiment, and presenting our findings to the class in addition to writing a paper about it. Truth be told, I’m pretty nervous about how this is going to go, and it’s the project I’m dreading most out of all the things I need to do between now and December 13, the magical day when my last final takes place and I get to go home for Christmas break. I’m not a big fan of experiments, and since we have to construct and conduct it ourselves, I’m afraid that something isn’t going to work out. I just keep reminding myself that once this class is done, I’ll have my science requirement taken care of!

Needless to say, I’ll be hitting the grind pretty hard tonight (or at least I’ll try), but not before inviting my suite mates to join me in watching the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas tonight at 8. I’ll make myself some hot chocolate and get some paper for paper chains to decorate our suite, and it will be a nice little breather before tonight’s long road ahead.

The Power of Stories

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Annie Brown

It’s midterms week! Despite all the work, writing, studying, stress, and yes, procrastination, I made time tonight to go see the Holloway Lecture, an annual lecture sponsored by the McDaniel English Department. (A generous offering of extra credit from one of my professors also coaxed me out of my room this evening.)

This year’s speaker was Cynthia L. Selfe, Ph.D., who spoke about stories and narratives in digital contexts, particularly in social media. Dr. Selfe said that even in our digital age, stories are still quite powerful and speak to us deeply. Personal narratives, the stories we tell about ourselves, shape not only our identities of ourselves but also what we identify with. As a result, we cannot separate our existence from our stories.

Selfe talked about how with social media, such as Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, form our stories for us by looking at them through statistics–how many followers we have, how many things we ‘like’ and what we ‘like’ and more. While we use social media to memorialize aspects of ourselves, online data collection software such as Klout creates vastly different narratives of ourselves from the information we provide over social media, narratives modified so that virtually all context is removed from them. Such data collection services can even gather information about us based on predicted shared characteristics we have with others we are ‘friends’ online with, even if we never post such information about ourselves.

It is important, according to Selfe, that we reclaim our narratives online by telling our own stories on our own terms. One such way she advocates doing this is to tell our literacy narratives on a website called the Digital Archives of Literacy Narratives (DALN), a project that Selfe has worked on for a number of years that collects stories about people’s literacy experiences through written narratives, videos, and audio recordings. The website serves as a tool for people to tell powerful narratives about all sorts of things, from coming to America and learning English for the first time to overcoming addiction and struggling to find creativity again–stories that are much more deep than something you would glean from a Facebook profile.

The stories we tell about ourselves are multitudinous and never complete, nor are they ever searingly honest. However, stories are important because they don’t reflect reality; they create it.

I found Selfe’s lecture very interesting because it made me think about how I share my own stories, especially online. I had the chance to talk to Selfe very briefly after her question and answer session, and she said that blogging is one great way to tell personal narratives and stories, which is something that I do and love doing. Listening to this lecture made me feel fortunate that I not only have the internet as my storytelling canvas but that I also have an outlet through this blog to share some of my stories. This blog gives me the chance to not only tell you about what McDaniel College is like, what goes on here, and how wonderful the College is (which I try to make the ultimate focus of my posts), but it also gives me personally the chance to share some of my stories as they relate to my experiences here and consider, as I write them, how they shape me..

So thank you, not only for taking the time to read this blog but also for listening to my stories. It makes me happy to be able to share them and McDaniel College with you.

Hey folks!

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Annie Brown

Now that the blog is officially live, I thought this would be a great opportunity to welcome you all and introduce myself a little. I’m glad you’re here, especially if you’re considering attending McDaniel!

My name is Annie, I’m a sophomore, and I’m an English major with a writing minor. I’m also a very proud member of McDaniel’s Honors Program.

I’m not a Maryland resident, so I found out about McDaniel through my mom, whose coworker has two children who have gone here and loved it. I actually never visited McDaniel until my fall of senior year of high school, but once I came for the November prospective students day, I knew I absolutely had to apply! If you’re a senior in high school currently applying for colleges, now is not too late for you to come visit us here at McDaniel!

I came back to McDaniel in February of my senior year, for a luncheon held for students accepted into the Honors Program. At this point, I was still unsure where I wanted to go to college. It was on this day that I became absolutely certain that McDaniel was the college for me! I loved the liberal arts focus of the College, and our Honors Program seemed like an excellent fit for me. Most importantly, I had the opportunity to meet some of our English professors, who showed me how awesome McDaniel’s English department is. I like how in addition to literature courses, we have a lot of writing and rhetoric courses, and a writing minor, all things that were exactly what I was looking for in a college!

I returned yet again to McDaniel in March of my senior year for admitted students day, and it was on that day that I insisted that my parents pay my enrollment deposit in person at the bursar’s office.

So that’s basically the story of how I came to be at McDaniel. I’ve been here for over a year now, and I’m very happy and proud to be a McDaniel student! My studies are wonderful, and they haven’t disappointed! I also know a lot of fantastic people, and there’s plenty of ways that I enjoy being involved on campus!

I hope you’ll follow me and the other bloggers as we post about our experiences as McDaniel students and let you know what’s going on here at our home on The Hill!

Two Down, Two to Go

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Whitney Walker

First of all, when did I become a junior? People always say college flies by because you are having so much fun and I never believed it till now. It seems like just yesterday I was starting my first semester as a freshman. I do admit, a lot has changed, for the better, since that first move-in day. I came to college a completely different person than I am today. The people that I have met here, both my friends and the faculty members, have shown me how to become my own person and have helped me grow into someone I like a lot more than the person I was after graduating high school. I’ve had the awesome chances to explore classes and subjects that I never thought I would like, yet somehow, I have at least one happy memory from every class. Even my Astronomy class, which I really hated at the time, I still laugh when I think about the children’s book my best friend and I put together as extra credit and how much fun it was to work on that project together. I can remember walking into my first auditions for the theatre department (auditioning for A Doll’s House) and Vagina Monologues being absolutely terrified that I was going to fail. Yesterday, I was hanging flyers up for Vagina Monologues interest meetings, since I will be co-directing them this year.

My entire outlook and dreams in life have completely changed. I came to college at a Theatre Arts major with the intent on getting on Broadway one day. Now, I am an English major with a Writing minor and a dream to write inspirational and magical fairytales for the Disney Company. I have become a more positive person and I continue to learn how to be a better person every day. McDaniel is listed as one of the top schools in Colleges that Change Lives because it is 100% true. Since coming to college I am so much happier and excited about my future. I can’t wait to see what these next two years on The Hill hold for me. After only a day of going through my classes, I am super excited about all of them. This semester I will be taking Literature by Women, Approaches to Everyday Discourse, Austen, Hip Hop Dance and Jazz Dance. The two dance classes are gym classes so they will only be five weeks each and since I love dance, I’m very excited to be able to get some of my gym requirement out of the way with dance classes. As for my other three classes, I love all three professors. They are extremely talented and know precisely what they are teaching. Going to class this semester will not be a difficult chore, but an opportunity to enhance my skills.

It may be a little early still but I have already started thinking about what I want my Senior Sem to be about. Being that I love Disney, I’d love to incorporate that. If the Discourse class goes well, which I think it will, I may do something about Walt Disney’s speeches or maybe the rhetoric of the parks even. The Disney Company absolutely fascinates me so I know I want to combine it with my love for language and literature to create an amazing Senior Sem that is not only a requirement for graduation, but also something fun and interesting. As far as this year goes, I am looking forward to all the adventures that lie ahead and I welcome them all with a smile.

~ “First day of school! First day of school! Wake up, wake up! Come on, first day of school!” –Nemo Finding Nemo~

Stories from the Hill

Tag Archives: English