Archive for category Student Successes
Busy But Productive
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Fiction, Homelife, Student Successes, Teaching on September 24th, 2010
Life has been busy, but happy. The short of it all:
- The PUP is working great. All modifications are holding up so far, and I hope to make one more this weekend.
- Classes are in full swing. So far so good. 101 is always tough slogging early on while the freshmen get their college legs under them, but they’re a good group.
- My “spare time” life as Jeep armorer required an enormous time crunch that cost me a couple of weeks of sleep … but it seems to be in steady rhythm now.
- The wee lass took a significant blow to the head from one of those “carriage” swings. I wasn’t there, but apparently the poor thing was shot airborne. Seems to be fine now, though, other than one big ol’ scab across half her forehead.
- I’m about 1/3 finished with a super secret new novel project.
- I did a heavy edit on the introduction to a scholarly edition of a medieval Italian text I cannot actually read.
- Another of my undergraduates got a paper he wrote for me accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. So many students have the potential, but few take me up on it when I tell them that if they work with me — writing, rewriting, researching, and rewriting some more — there’s a good chance I can get them in print. This young man took the challenge and succeeded.
And last but not least…
- Tonight I finished the first (and perhaps last) draft of a paper I’m presenting in mid-November. I’m never this far ahead!
The 2010 Shako Released!
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes, Teaching on March 19th, 2010
My first year here at The Citadel I was made faculty advisor to The Shako, the Literary Magazine of The Citadel. It was a surprising thing for me, but I’ve tried to take advantage of it for the past four years. I like to think that the publication is better than ever as the result of my labors, though one can never really know such things. This year’s edition, my fourth, will be my last. I’ve worried that the publication will grow stale under my watch, so I’m passing the torch to another faculty member. She’ll know doubt take it to great places I didn’t imagine, and I’m really excited to see that happen.
At any rate, all this is prelude to the announcement that the 2010 Shako is now in the wild. It’s a terrific year, with some great fiction, poetry, photography, and even some artwork. Indeed, our cover art is the work of a talented freshman here on campus. I touched it up and added a bit of antiquity and mystery to the piece, but it was awesome raw material to work with — I’m greatly pleased with the results.
If you’re on campus, you’ll find copies piled around the lobbies of Mark Clark Hall, in the English office, in the sally ports, in my office, and being handed out around parade time tomorrow morning. Enjoy!
Front Cover of the 2010 Shako!
Student Publication: Gold Star Success
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes on March 18th, 2010
The Gold Star Journal — the scholarly counterpart to The Shako, publishing the very best academic work of The Citadel’s cadets — once again features an essay from one of my classes. This time, it’s an essay from my Honors Tolkien class, “The Precious and the Pearl,” by Noah Koubenec. It’s a terrific essay, quite fitting for the high honor, and of course I’m selfishly happy that a Tolkien essay (gasp!) managed such placement.
Noah also gave a version of the paper alongside professorial types at the recent PAC conference, and he’s preparing a larger version of it for submission to peer-reviewed academic journals. Plus, he’s a finalist for a Truman.
Congratulations, Noah!
Student Publication in The Lesser Squawk
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes on December 6th, 2009
This is the kind of news I seriously love to share: Another of my students has been published.
This particular student is actually a knob (Citadel-talk for “freshman”) in my English 101 class of all things: a jolly good chap named James Tomlinson, who has a brief article in the most recent edition of The Lesser Squawk, the newsletter (circulation over 1200) of the Charleston Audubon Society. His article (you’ll eventually be able to read it online) is a report on simple ways for folks to save energy, a “go green” to save the planet sort of piece. This, in itself, is pretty interesting, since most folks probably think the students at El Cid are card-carrying, hard-right, ultra-conservative right-wing-nuts who’d be liable to deny environmental concerns.
Perhaps more interesting, though, is the story about how this happened, which starts over a beer out at the beach.
No, it wasn’t with young Mr. Tomlinson. And no, I’m not encouraging drinking. The beer was had in a social setting out at The Citadel’s beach house, during our yearly “Welcome Back, Faculty!” gathering. I was talking to people here and there when I happened across Paul Nolan, a clever ornithologist in the Biology Department. We came to El Cid at the same time, so we’ve been friends over the years. Anyway, after a bit of chit-chat, Paul notes that he’s now the president of the Charleston Audubon Society. Quite cool, of course. Then he tells me about The Lesser Squawk, the society’s newsletter. “You know,” he says (or close to it, I’m paraphrasing my memory), “if you have any students who could write something for it, we should talk.”
Well, any student is capable of crafting publishable work. So we talked some more, and eventually I had concocted a plan to have my two 101 classes select subjects for their third essay that would be suitable for an Audubon Society newsletter. We had a simple competition: the best essay would go to the editor of the Squawk.
Well, congratulations to Mr. Tomlinson. He won, and they accepted the essay for publication.
Cameron Matthew Anestis: A Remembrance
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes, Teaching on August 20th, 2009
The news came to me from Citadel cadets via Facebook about an hour before midnight: LCpl Anestis had died.
I immediately went through several stages, from thinking it was some sort of sick joke to hoping it was someone other than my former student Cameron Matthew Anestis — selfishly hoping it was the loss of a young man I didn’t know rather than one I’d grown to respect so deeply.
After midnight, I had the confirmation I feared via a brief online obituary:
Convocation and a Surprise
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife, Student Successes on August 26th, 2008
Today was convocation, an annual ritual in which college professors welcome incoming freshmen by dressing up in preacher robes, wearing funny hats, and then getting really sweaty since it’s the end of August and no one in their right mind ought to wear such things when the humidity is high.
On the plus side, this year a fellow English professor, Sean Heuston, gave the welcome-to-college speech to the beleagured knobs (that’s “freshmen” to y’all in non-cadetland). He did quite well, I thought. I hope the young folk were paying attention.
But the real nice thing that happened today? Walking back home in my insanely hot and heavy preacher-man robes, I first ran into Cadet McKenna, who seems closer to an English conversion — hallelujah! — and then into Cadet Burnley, who has already seen the light of becoming an English Major and is doing yeoman’s work bringing the truth to his fellows. Both are fine young men who should have much success in life, and I was very glad to see them.
That said, special notice this day goes to Mr. Burnley, who is fresh from a summer spent abroad in Europe. He had under his arm one of those hardboard-and-plastic poster frames, with a print already mounted inside. This, he explained, was a gift for me, thanking me for the recommendation I wrote for his study abroad trip (he got a nice scholarship, good lad). No thanks are really necessary for such a thing, of course, since I don’t lie in recommendations. I just tell the truth (which, in this case, happened to be good since he’s an excellent young man).
Anyway, even though I don’t feel like I earned the gift, I gladly accepted it. How could I not? It’s a limited edition, numbered print (103/1000) of Mark Knopfler from his world tour this summer — the one I so desperately wanted to see. Mr. Burnley picked up the print in Europe when he saw him in concert (lucky lad!) and then carried the thing halfway around the globe. Can you believe that?
And that’s not even the best part.
It’s autographed.
Unbelievable.
Patio Performances
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes on April 11th, 2008
What a busy week! Last night I was the MC for the annual rendition of Patio Performances, in which three talented cadets read their creative writing under the shading oaks of the library courtyard. It is a pleasant 40 minutes, especially on a beautiful spring evening here in Charleston.
The cadets featured were all published in this year’s Shako, and they all did a terrific job. A hearty congratulations to Travis Hedges, Jay Mabry, and Cary McNamara!
Student Publication Success
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes on March 13th, 2008
Cadet Joseph C. Collins, an upstanding Chemistry major from New York who will join the Navy after graduation, wrote a research paper for me last spring as a freshman (or “knob,” as we call the poor folks hereabouts). This Chemistry major’s topic? Shakespeare’s Othello, by golly.
Joseph is a terrific student, so it was no surprise to find that his research paper was terrific — so terrific, in fact, that I suggested he consider thinking about the possibility of publishing it.
Well, a copy of this year’s Gold Star Journal — The Citadel’s scholarly nonfiction equivalent to The Shako — arrived in my mail today. And what do I find on page 1? Why, it’s Mr. Collins’ paper: “An In-depth Look at Mental Illness in Othello.” And it’s even better than I remembered.
Congratulations, Joseph!
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