Capstone is FINISHED

     Capstone presentations for the calss of 2017 of the English & Humanities Department are finished, so the process is now DONE. (Hopefully. Judgement Grades are TBA.) They started around 8:30 this morning, we got to the Baird Hall performance studio around 8-ish. Most of the alarms were set between 3 and 5 a.m. Kenzie studied how tribal identity and the modern world clashed in Indian literature, Madison studied men in Gothic lit, Lauren studied evil in Stephen King novels, Jenny studied how children's lit looks at death. Other presentations included looking at how YA lit deals with disabilities, what the Illiad has to say about leadership, and controversial women of the Bible.
     Mine was analyzing country music as poetry, I was scheduled third, and the presentation went slightly worse than I thought it would, though apparently I finally managed to project well. Like I expected, I got blasted with (in the audience's opinion) most of the harshest questions from the committee, but I think I came up with the right responses (improv is useful that way). Dr. Mackie whispered "Very good, Wes!" on her way back to her seat during a break. Besides the dozen or so Capstone students and the dozen or so members of the committee, there were about ten or fifteen members of the audience, including our fellow classmate-coworkers Ashley, Brandon, Brian, Bryce, Debra, Kara and Sage.
     The committee members got into an argument while questioning Madison, which was funny. "So you're saying that [Rebecca's] De Winter solves the problem by loving the narrator," someone asks, "and [Jane Eyre's] Rochester solves the problem by attempting to save his first wife from the house fire,  but what about [Wuthering Heights's] Heathcliff?" "Heathcliff solves the problem by dying." Another quote from the committee members' argument, Dr. Ford says in his deadpan way, "See, now I was going to say that murder was the red flag in relationships with all of these guys..."
     There was a reception in the English Department afterward, with tons of good food. I chowed down on ribs, Cool Ranch Doritos and Dr. Ford-baked macaroons. (He also finds baking to be a good stress reliever.)

     There was a "fun facts" survey we had to do, maybe as a calming-nerves exercise, one of the questions was "Which fictional characters would you most like to be?" Answers included multiple people listing Atticus Finch and Lizzy Bennet. Other answers included Morticia Addams, Lew Archer, Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing), Charlotte the spider, Ferdinand the bull, Jay Gatsby, Dorian Gray, Katniss Everdeen, Junie B. Jones, Jo March, Roald Dahl's Matilda, Odysseus, Mary Poppins, Diana Prince, Auggie Pullman from RJ Palacio's Wonder, Steve Rogers, Zoe Washburne (Firefly) and Emma Woodhouse. That's the type of collection of characters you get when surveying a dozen English majors. My three picks were Atticus, Ferdinand and Steve, though I thought about putting Jo or Peter Parker on there.
     Another question of the survey was "What skills do you wish you had?" Answers here included cooking, drawing, mastery of various musical instruments, portion control of food, superpowers in general, teleportation and time-travel. My answers were "piano-playing, knowledge of what genre best fits my skillset as a writer, and teleportation."
     People we would invite to dinner include Agatha Christie, Jimmy Fallon, Neil Gaiman, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Tim Tebow and Betty White. I don't remember any of the other answers, but except for Hemingway, pretty much all of these people would be interesting to talk with.

     Mom and Amy stopped by on the way back from Kenneth's funeral tonight; it was good to see them. Stopped by Wal-Mart on a grocery run, got Brad Paisley's new CD.