two events for those of us having existensial crises

As most of you know, I am the head of the English Undergrad Association. We are involved in two events this month, one practical and one philosophical, for those of you questioning the purpose of an ARHU degree. The first is ACCESS2ALUMNI, a college-wide event on April 11, 2007 in which ARHU alums talk about their degrees and where they’ve gone with them. Writer George Pelecanos is the featured alum, the EUA is hosting a round-table, and there’s lots of food and an Ipod giveaway.

ACCESS2ALUMNI

The second event is the EUA’s second annual philosophical student/faculty discussion of the merits and uses of literary study. On April 17th at 4pm join Professors Kirschenbaum, Mallios, and Olmert and Dave Eubanks of the Center for Teaching Excellence as well as your classmates in 1117 Susquehanna for a unique opportunity to share concerns with your peers and professors. This event was a great success last year; help make it as successful this year!Email me for more info: nprizel@umd.edu

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time to think…

Spring break is affording me much needed time to read, think, sleep, etc, which has in turn inspired me to share some of those thoughts. But first off, I want to welcome John Murray to On Purpose. John is a dual-degree English and Computer Science major whose vast experience with new media is proving invaluable to me in running this blog. John taped and posted Jonathan Tucker’s TerPoets performance, and we’re hoping to get more creative work up. In that vein, if any of you are writers, musicians, etc. who would be interested in putting something up on the blog, please let me know. The blog will be more relevant to your life if you contribute. Also, you can click RSS feed on the right side bar of the blog and get updates sent to your email.

I also would like the blog to serve as an announcement board for ARHU-related academic/community events, so feel free to email me things to put up.

On a more philosophical note, I’ve been thinking a lot about apathy and our generation. I get really really frustrated when older generations blame everything on us “young whippersnappers” being apathetic and self-absorbed. But there are days I think its true (maybe this is because I’m dealing with the frustration of starting up a student organization). And then I hear this interview with John Mayer on NPR, regarding his song “Waiting on the World”. I’m not a big fan of John Mayer for both musical and political reasons (feel free to disagree), and his explanation of apathy seems a little weak to me here. I wonder if the issue isn’t that we don’t like being talked down to but rather that we have too many people, media, etc. talking at us. We all know the whole thing about information being much more fragmented (which, of course, I’m contributing to with this blog), and I wonder if apathy is a sort of shut-down response to too much data, much of it not very good.

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Terp Poets

Untitled

Jonathan Tucker presents an untitled piece performed on March 6th, 2007 at Terpoets weekly open mic.

We will be posting performances here weekly, with further collaboration in the works.

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