On Wednesday night  most of us from the English Honors Seminar went to Professor McCoy’s apartment for a final farewell celebration. We all had an awesome time, drinking wine and eating delicious home-cooked food (along with a lot of fattening deserts). It was a really relaxing experience to be able to reflect on what we had learned throughout the semester as well as share our future post-grad plans. We even had a long heated debate about love and possession, courtesy of Ugo… I don’t want to publicize his private affairs, but I thought it was so great that we could bring the topics we discussed throughout the year into our personal lives, to see the implications of the questions we raised during the Honors Conference, i.e. Is Love What You Take?, in people’s lived experiences. I also enjoyed finding out a little bit more about everyone’s unique perspectives, even though I didn’t agree with all of them… Passionate, yet, healthy argumentation sometimes allows you to learn the most about others

Anyway, I just wanted to share this particular memory because my time in the English Honors Seminar was one of the best experiences of my undergraduate career at Queens College. Even though there was definitely a lot of work, having a year-long course really allowed the entire class to grow closer as a community and I think, in the end, we all came away learning so much. As for me, I never thought of “love” as an especially exciting critical topic, but after taking the Honors seminar with Professor McCoy, I have begun to see this incredibly amorphous, yet powerful emotion as a fascinating topic to explore simply because it is so intimately connected to the human experience…

I know that there was a bit of a scare mid-way through the year when Professor McCoy told us about the potential “demise” of the program, but luckily it has been avoided and Professor Buell has a full class for the fall. I am really excited about the topic of “Literature and Technology,” even though, selfishly, I doubt any theme can beat our seminar on love… Since I will be attending the CUNY Graduate Center and staying close to home, I cannot wait to come back in the spring to see what next year’s seniors will do for their conference. I think this ongoing interest and investment in the program’s outcome is what makes it so great and such a vital component of the English Department as a whole. The seminar itself creates long-lasting friendships and connections- we even discussed at Professor McCoy’s house the possibility for having a yearly reunion, which would be fantastic if we can somehow all negotiate our hectic schedules. ^^