Tag Archives: introductions

Hey There!

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Hey everyone! The name’s Hannah Starke and I’m a junior here at CofC. Like what seems to be the greater half of the student body, I was once a very ambitious Biology major with every intent to go to Med school, but have since realized that you do not have to be a doctor to lead a fulfilling life. Words to the wise, if you are clandestinely taking this class, do not break it to your parents over dinner. Tell them over the phone, you’ll be able to escape the lecture a lot easier.

When I was the ambitious doe eyed freshman though, I joined the college EMS, purely as a resume booster, but have since come to love what I do with them.  If I come into class and am barely able to stay awake, blame it on the drunken students that roam our campus at 3 a.m.

I also write for the school paper, primarily sports.  While I enjoy news stories and getting to do a little bit of investigative journalism, sports is where my heart lies because I’m free to use as many adjectives and show as much bias as I want (as long as it’s in the CofC direction of course).

Between those two activities, I work at the Jewish temple, KKBE, on Hassel street. If you ever, and I mean ever, need some Jewish food, come to me, because my roommates are getting tired of me stocking the fridge with all the leftovers people force on me there.

As for my family, we originally hail from Oklahoma, where we do, in fact, live in houses, not teepees, and don’t ride horses to school. I moved here my Senior year of high school, and have been a Charlestonian ever since. I have one brother named Callaway (so named after a golf club), who is 8 and is the absolute coolest person I know.

Time for Introductions

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This first week’s blog post is, as I explained in class Wednesday, an introduction of yourself to us. You decide what you’d like to share and how you’d like to present it. I’ve produced one that is pasted at the bottom of this “assignment.”

I encourage you to present your introduction of yourself as a post to the blog. If instead you present it as a response to (comment on) my post, I’ll assume that means you tried to post but it didn’t work and we need to spend some more time in class on Monday going over the steps of posting.

First, though, please head over to the Dashboard (see “Get Blogging!” in the menu bar if this doesn’t make sense) and update your profile so we see your name, not your official username, with your post. In the left hand menu, it’s the third category up from the bottom (Users: Your Profile). Do bear in mind that the course blog is open to both of my sections of 299, which means students who aren’t in your section will be posting and commenting in here throughout the semester. This might make it especially helpful if you would upload a photo of yourself, since we won’t all be in the classroom together twice a week.

After tonight’s 8pm deadline, please read around, getting to know your fellow classmates.

Some things about me:

I’ve been teaching at CofC since 2000. Prior to that, I taught college in Los Angeles and in Portland, Oregon, which is my chosen hometown. I return whenever I can, and will be running the 40th Portland Marathon there in October (my 2nd). I’m a medievalist but that hardly means I find medieval literature and culture vastly more interesting than anything else. Though I fell for Chaucer my very first semester as an English major (having been a Bio major, then a Soc major before that) and went to grad school expecting to specialize in medieval literature, I was very nearly lured away by James Joyce and by the American 1890s. Now, I love contemporary British literature, in particular. I’m also quite a pop culture fan, currently engrossed by True Blood and Weeds and catching up on It’s Always Sunny, eagerly awaiting the return of Beavis & Butthead. (Really.) My favorite film of late is Beginners, which I can’t recommend strongly enough. I’ll be seeing the Flaming Lips again when they’re here this Fall and really miss all the shows I got to see in Portland. On the rare occasion that Modest Mouse, my favorite band of the late 90s and early 00s, comes to town, I always seem to be elsewhere.

This summer I spent writing two articles that are very nearly finished (the deadline for one is tomorrow) and training in the heat for my upcoming race. I took a week off to head to the UK to visit my in-laws in Devon (staying in Dartmouth, more specifically) and hanging out in London, where I spent my senior year of college studying abroad, and took a quick weekend trip to DC.

You can find out a few more things about me on my home page.

Ask questions! I really enjoy hearing what they are.

About Me!

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I am Joseph M. McKinley—Hi.  I am a Junior freshly transferred from Trident.  I like to read.  I didn’t always read.  But, I was working this job sweeping popcorn at a movie theatre in high school and recently I’d seen a picture of this poet in a rock&roll picture book at school.  He interested me.  I bought his book.  Well, a few days later at the theatre in the podium I found a book—belonged to my manager.  There was poetry in the back and I read it standing there between ripping tickets.  I told my manager it reminded me of this guy Ginsberg I’d just picked up.  He said that the book from the podium was by this Ginsberg’s close friend and then he recommended me a book while I was taking out the trash.  I bought it the next day.  I know the places where I read it.  In the night.  The next summer I found myself in Denver.  The next I found someone else in New Orleans.  But I had good managers at that theatre—two of them, at least.  This other one and I decided to become poets!  He had keys to the place.  At night, when it was all closed and everybody’d gone home, we’d go up the latter and onto the roof and pull out the long strands of ticket stubs we’d been scribbling on all day.  “Now, remember—just six stanzas.”  “Yeah, Yeah.”  -We’d put out these rules and we traded stubs at the end too.  They’d be something about little boys in baseball caps bustling busting popcorn boom up into the air (I’d write, then sweep).  Or boys waiting out of the doors for their sweethearts.  But anyways, the long ago mentioned former poet led to Whitman—the latter to young Stephen Dedalus and younger Rimbaud.  Corso was there too, and Burroughs, but…Bukowski was near him on the shelf!  I found him.  I devoured Bukowski.  Buk led to Hem.  That’s where I am.    And there are others, of course there’s others but that is where I am.  And I am excited about it.  And that is why I’m here.