Service on the rocks

October 31, 2011

Reading Time: 3 minutes A personal account of a few students who spent their fall break doing service   Creak. Crack. Snap. Groan. Chomp. Thwap. Ow.   These were the sounds emanating from Canyonlands National Park over Fall Break this past week. The occasional “ows” came from the 16 UVU students, myself included, and one recently appointed advisor who […]

Something wicked: the history of Halloween

October 17, 2011

Reading Time: 2 minutes “Tis now the very witching time of night/When churchyards yawn and Hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.”   Hamlet was speaking of the time between dark and light, the time when shadows are longest and the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest. The time when “grim, grinning ghosts […]

Middle-earth 101

April 18, 2011

Reading Time: < 1 minute One class to rule them and in the darkness bind them. In the pantheon of English courses one might take at a university, there are standbys like Shakespeare, the grammar and rhetoric courses, the non-denominational Brit and American Lit classes, but where, oh where, do the writings of one of the best-known authors of the […]

How to vacate your life in style

April 11, 2011

Reading Time: 3 minutes With the end of the semester fast approaching, brains have all but melted to sloshy, greasy, useless messes and the thought of trying to plan a fun-filled summer is the furthest thing from them, right? Wrong. Summer is a time of liberation. It may bring about jobs, internships, marriage and all of the things that […]

Swimming with finals

April 4, 2011

Reading Time: 2 minutes As we head into the last month of the semester, many emoticons are used to describe feelings on campus. There’s the smiley face with tongue sticking out, the shocked face with wide eyes or even the frowny face with an X for eyes. We are dragging on, pining for that invisible ringing bell that will […]

Tricks of the cheap trade

March 7, 2011

Reading Time: 3 minutes When it comes to being a college student, life gets pretty freaking expensive. I should know – I’ve been a college student for a long time now. So I thought I’d compile a list of tricks I’ve learned for cutting down the budget in our lives. I’m not talking about eating only Ramen noodles because […]

Kate McPherson: Paradise found

March 7, 2011

Reading Time: 3 minutes Kate McPherson, an Associate Professor of English and Literature, was recently awarded the Alumni Outstanding Educator Award, an honor she says she is “pretty proud of” because the winner is chosen by graduating students as they fill out a final survey asking about influential teachers and experiences. “That’s pretty cool,” she says. McPherson started out […]

Avoiding parking woes

February 22, 2011

Reading Time: 2 minutes People have done some crazy things in the name of parking on campus. Once a truck was 4-wheel driven to a 45 degree angle up a snow pile that the shovels had created near the edge of the LA building, just to get a spot, any spot. Unfortunately, unless you plan on being at school […]

New kid on the block

February 14, 2011

Reading Time: < 1 minute “I wanted somewhere I could submit my paper on James Joyce,” says Jenna Atkynson, co-founder of the university’s new English journal, Essais. Following in the tradition of Touchstones and Warp and Weave, respectively the school’s creative and speculative fiction journals, Essais is in its first semester and will be the depository for academic papers focusing […]

How to have an anti-Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2011

Reading Time: 2 minutes For those of us who are single, February 14th can be the bane of existence. While couples may represent a minority of the population, their celebrations of togetherness represent the entirety of the public domain. That is why, several years ago, I hit on a tradition to bring joy to the Lonely Hearts Club. Whether […]