let's make fun of nineteen-year-old zenith...

[zenithblue]

For your amusement, I thought I'd put up some of my college paper titles. Because I'm cleaning my room and found a stack of them and it's so obvious to me that I was vastly entertained by myself and also so obvious that I was a HUGE GIANT DORK.

Here are some of the gems I found:

"Deception and Disguise in Life is a Dream"
              Ah, alliteration. So cute. Most people get over it by AP English in high school.

"Mirrors of Disenchantment: Cynicism and the Reevaluation of Ideals in Fifth of July"
             Doesn't this sound more like a romance novel? Mirrors of Disenchantment. There should be a ripped bodice somewhere in there.

"Get the Guests: Albee's Dismantling of Illusions"
             Again with the alliteration, although to be fair this one is Albee's fault and not mine.

"Rhythm and Redemption in Donne's Sonnet #7"

            Jesus Christ. Someone stage an intervention.  Clearly there's some kind of synaptic lapse that's lead her to believe two or more words starting with the same letter might reveal cleverness.

...but is she done yet? No:
"Memory and Meditation: Isolation and Renewal in 'Frost at Midnight' and 'The Life.'"
"Sorcery and Storytelling: Pilate's Role as Spiritual Guide in Song of Solomon"
"Mourning Motherhood: Repetition and Revision in 'A Procession at Candlemas'"
"Tattoos and Lace: Metonymical Metaphors in Typee"

Okay, but the best I saved for last. Luckily I managed at some point to break my affinity for alliteration, and we get the following casual but penetrating title: "Barbarians, Christians, What's the Difference?: Religious Commentary in Montaigne's Skepticism."

Comments

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is hilarious. I've got to look up my old papers from college--I'm sure I've got some terrible titles to my name. As for your titles, I particularly like the double alliteration in "Mourning Motherhood: Repetition and Revision in 'A Procession at Candlemas.'" Awesome.

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

Hey, I titled a paper on Kafka's Metamorphosis "Flea Circus of the Damned", so it's not like I can toss any stones here.

[te-amo-azul.livejournal.com]

Cuddly kittens are cute. Downy ducklets, ditto. And those titles are beyond adorable.

If it makes you feel better, during the era of this icon, I published film reviews in the Seattle Gay News "in character" as "Salka Vertigo" (a play on the name of one of Garbo's lovers, Salka Viertel). Of course, I didn't want to write closeted, so I also had my real name printed in a little box, with a note specifying that Salka was my creation. The reviews often mentioned dialogue between Salka and her gf, Dragon something, Dragon Wimminborn?

I dare you to take a drink of sody pop and read that paragraph again.

[somethinghead.livejournal.com]

I thought I had more that were a lot worse, but a couple I turned up, browsing through my files

"My Big Fat Obnoxious Frankenstein" in which I analyze how Dr. Frankenstein has the lack of scruples and cutthroat desire to succeed that would make him a successful reality show contestant

but, the worst, the punniest

"Quit Dragon Me Down: Dragons and Other Monsters in Three Epics" - the three epics being Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso

[choogy.livejournal.com]

i LOVE this. what a fun entry. this is definitely meme-worthy!

[punkybrister69.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's nothing compared to my insistence on having an epigram on each of my essays for forever and a day... most were Pink Floyd lyrics, no less.

[lagizma.livejournal.com]

Next, I want scans of your high school English essays.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Are you kidding? That is genius. Awesome.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD I don't think I've ever seen that picture...so adorable. So adorable!

Dragon Wimminborn.

Awesome.

You nutter.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

That is brilliant. Did your teachers dock you points for puns? I had a boyfriend who I used to charge fifty cents per pun from once. I was a wealthy woman.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Epigrams rule. i'm going to have epigrams on everything I write. I was never ballsy enough to do it on an academic paper, though.

(kowtowing)

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I think those are all in Alaska...but never fear, I'm sure to discover something humiliating as I clean my room. Maybe I can have a regular feature as I get ready to move.

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

No BS. Literary Theory was a fun class, let me tell you. I am proud to say that I infected my professor with a taste for Neil Gaiman's work when I turned in my essay on A Game Of You - her notes included a comment that she was going to ask the university library to order his books as a result of my introducing her to his writing.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

The "prove how much a geek you were" meme. I somehow think it's not going to be sweeping the vainglorious livejournal population anytime soon. Then again, most my f-list are shameless and brilliant nerds, so...hey, it stands a chance. ;)

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Yes, the process of organizing my shit for a cross country move has definitely given me a chance to meditate on the metaphorical distances crossed since the first round of schooling. Though I'm still bloody terrible at titles, so maybe I haven't really gotten that far after all.

[somethinghead.livejournal.com]

Nope, they were fine with it. The really funny thing is the Frankenstein paper. My teacher noted that I did a more thorough analysis of reality television than I did of the novel, but, he thought that my paper was "clever" and still gave me a good grade on it. For some reason in that entire class I got by on cleverness rather than solid literary analysis.