I See Why English Professors Love This

I've never read Moby Dick before, but, much like Dr. Wickman pointed out, it's always been on my radar because it's just one of those books everyone knows about. I'm actually really glad I've never picked it up before now, though, but I already see so much that I just would not have been able to appreciate before simply because being an English major for a year and a half has taught me so much about how to read and how to understand great literature. Thanks to my education, lines like "Ignorance is the parent of fear" (p. 19) and extended descriptions and musings on topics like whether our shadow is our true self and the body just a vehicle are so much more rich and intriguing simply because I have learned how to think literature as well as just read it.

Queequeg, and more, his relationship with Ishmael, fascinates me. It's so interesting how they can be such good friends, and still Ishmael off-handedly judges him at time for being a "pagan" and just dismisses his intelligence and/or his behavior as inferior. At the same time, though, I don't think Ishmael could or would become as fast of friends with anyone from his same religious/cultural background. So, ironically, the very thing that keep he and Queequeg forever at a kind of distance--their cultural and religious differences--is the very thing that excuses such a fast friendship. And this is all the more intriguing because this is often how it happens in our own lives. I remember making very fast and very strong friends on my mission for the LDS church in Argentina, yet always feeling a kind of insurmountable distance simply because of cultural differences. Melville plays with this phenomenon very precisely and it keeps me reading (despite the obvious and grueling lack of any plot whatsoever in these early pages).

I'm Paul Bills

Hello, Team Ahab!

Me and my wife, Maddie

I'm sorry I haven't posted earlier, it's been quite a crazy weekend for me because my birthday actually happens to be tomorrow and so I've been busy with family and all such things.

I'm Paul Bills. I'm from Salt Lake, and I've been married for just over a year now to a girl I've known since Jr. High but never even thought about dating until I saw her for the first time after my mission here at BYU. You just never know what can happen, I guess.

I'm a senior English major hoping to graduate in June, and I'm looking forward to getting a Master's Degree in Video Game Production from the U of U as they were recently ranked number one in the nation for their program. I actually just very recently made that decision, in part thanks to Dr. Gideon Burton himself. I was in his Shakespeare class last semester and he encouraged us to do our final paper on something that we really cared about and to make it publishable. So I did, and I found out games are way more important and intriguing to me than I have ever given them credit for, and that they are doing more than they ever have. The paper I ended up writing, "'Such Stuff As Dreams are Made On': Shakespeare and the Cultural Legitimacy of Video Games" got accepted into the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference, which I will be presenting at in October alongside professors from all over the country. At first I thought I was going to become an English professor focusing on New Media applying literary theory to video games, but the more I studied the more I learned the kind of games I want to study are just barely starting to get made, and I wanted to have a hand in that. So that's my plan. Since I made that plan I have been designing a game concept every day as a challenge to myself inspired my Ray Bradbury's writing method of writing a short story every day from the time he was twelve until a stroke took away his ability to write decades later.

Screenshot from The Last of Us, an amazing game that ends in Salt Lake City (image credit Kotaku.com)

Besides video games, I'm also a huge fan of board and card games, which are going through a renaissance of their own at the moment. I design my own games for fun, and play games like Dominion, 7 Wonders, and BANG! whenever I get the chance. I also follow a ton of tech blogs and sites and have written and queried a first fantasy novel in a series of four that I've been outlining since I was nine years old. I've also been very serious about writing poetry for a long time, though time constraints and competing interests have suppressed that a bit lately.

I'm excited to get to know you all and excited for the class!

To the Pequod!

Things to Know about Aleesha

I've never been great at making up titles. I'm Aleesha. English major, editing minor (There seems to be a few of us in this class). Currently, I am working at the BYU Religious Studies Center as a student editor. One day, I hope to be involved in book publishing. I'm from the faraway land of Lehi, UT.

I don't have very many recent pictures of me, sorry.

My sister (left) and me (right)

To help you learn more about who I am, I have decided to share five interesting facts about me.

Pleasta Meecha!

 Well, hey there everyone. This is, I suppose, my introduction post. I am not a big guy on taking photos of myself, so any time I want to post one for a profile or whatever, I have to take one on the spot, so I've included an obligatory photo. I feel like when introducing themselves, most often people emphasize the same five or so things and then finish it all off with "something interesting" which invariably becomes nothing more than an extension of one of the first five things, so this time, I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach and share some things that not everyone might know. I hope you can get to know the everyday stuff about me from just regular interactions, here and in real life.

I am a technology enthusiast with reservations. I follow all sorts of cool new technologies, from transparent solar cells to 3D printers that can be used to print viable human tissue (to quote the oracle from Hercules, "...it's gonna be big"). I'm interested (though shamefully inexperienced) in lots of different forms of digital expression, from 2D art to filmmaking, and I'm really interested in reinterpretations of older forms, like spoken word poetry and the work of young and aspiring Youtube artists like Lindsey Stirling. It's secretly a dream to make a successful vlog or Youtube channel someday. I remain adamant, however, in my opinion that just because you're phone is an egghead, mine doesn't have to be a "dumb phone" even though it's from 2005. I like a lot of the features of modern phones and stuff, but I know myself well enough to know that if I had a so-called "smart" phone, I would probably quickly get sucked into all the cool apps and other stuff. So, I stick with my museum-worthy RAZR. 

See, MSPaint isn't thaaaat bad...

Ever since I was 15 or so, I've wanted to develop a low-cost method of water purification for application in low-income areas. That's pretty much what made me want to study chemistry originally (that, and the prospect of going into food sciences and developing calorie-free Goldfish crackers so I could not feel bad about being practically addicted to them). I worked at a nature preserve for a summer and actually served on a municipal water council to raise awareness of water-born illness and to encourage "green" building techniques. Yep... closet hippie. Eventually, though, English called my name, so I can still be a hippie, just in different ways.