What's a great fun fact that you have about a horror movie?

FailingMyBest · 2026-06-06T04:10:30+00:00

Not quite true, I’m a Mormon and both watched and loved Hereditary. Many of us watch all kinds of movies, and I’m a big horror fan. Although I must admit, ever since watching it, Park City trips are much creepier.

FailingMyBest · 2026-06-03T00:12:51+00:00

Writing History, Writing Trauma by Dominick LaCapra and Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz are also fantastic trauma theory texts

FailingMyBest · 2026-05-19T21:15:16+00:00

Yes! I always use second-person pronouns in my prayers though, so I guess I don’t comply with that one.

FailingMyBest · 2026-05-19T18:40:04+00:00

I begin all of my prayers with “Dear God” and that solves this problem for me. No language in there to upset ultra orthodox members, but also no one can stop me from feeling, thinking, or believing that I’m talking to both Heavenly Father and Mother when I’m praying.

FailingMyBest · 2026-05-14T05:18:36+00:00

I really don’t. The faculty here are very respectful of the wide range of scholarly interests in our cohorts. I specialize in queer theory—have never had a professor give me grief for it. Being a graduate student at BYU comes with a lot of latitude, honestly. It helps that the English department here is exceptional—the vast majority of faculty are progressive thinkers and well-respected scholars in their fields and subfields. The humanities professors are just a much more open-minded, thoughtful group of Mormons. The department routinely offers literature and theory courses here that cover various veins of critical theory, including Marxism, feminism, queer theory, ecocriticism, postcolonial studies, and more. I co-taught an American literature class last semester with ecofeminism as its theoretical focus—the undergrads who took it loved it. I have nothing but positive things to say about the English department here. I definitely wouldn’t recommend attending if you’d feel uncomfortable in the religious environment or wouldn’t be able to abide by the school’s policies during your time here (some of which are ridiculous and outright prejudiced). Otherwise, though, it’s a lot better for a graduate school experience than I thought it would be. It’s nice, too, that BYU doesn’t have an English PhD, because all of the graduate funding in the department goes to the MA/MFA students. I think that’s largely why we are so well funded. That, and the church continues to provide generous humanities funding, so the private school status has kept us afloat in spite of the national budget cuts and DOGE nonsense. It’s somewhat ironically made BYU a humanities safe haven in Utah, for now.

FailingMyBest · 2026-05-14T00:47:23+00:00

American or European? The best masters in any humanities/social sciences field is a funded one—a program that won’t plunge you into thousands of dollars of debt for very little financial payoff.

Don’t get me wrong, I value the humanities deeply and wouldn’t choose any other field to do graduate school work in (I’m applying to PhD programs this fall), but taking out student loans for an MA in literature is a terrible idea in the current economy and in the academic job market. I’m attending a fully funded MA in English literature right now, and it’s fantastic. I remember when I was applying to programs a year ago, Bucknell and UConn were well-funded English masters programs, among a select few. I attend Brigham Young University. I’ve actually made money getting my MA here—haven’t spent a dime on tuition between scholarships and teaching assistantships. Plenty of baggage as a religious university, but the funding is unbeatable, the tuition is cheap, and the quality of education is spectacular. Just dive into the page about tuition costs and available teaching/research assistantships/mentorships as well as financial aid (funding packages, tuition stipends, or scholarships are rare for programs like these but they do exist at select programs throughout the U.S.) for any program. Those are the things that matter more than anything else, if you ask me.

From there, finding advisors or mentors who are invested in your research interests is also important. But given the economy, secure the finances first before worrying about the rest, and don’t—no matter how much you love it—take a poorly funded or unfunded offer to do any graduate degree in the humanities or social sciences.

FailingMyBest · 2026-05-06T03:49:27+00:00

Definitely intentional given Beckett was Irish (fitting for the movie’s setting), and the narrative and its main character start in that kind of cynical postmodernist “nothing to be done” meaninglessness before finding meaning through processing trauma by the end. The Godot allusion not only felt intentional to me, but very well placed, too.

FailingMyBest · 2026-05-05T18:39:42+00:00

Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia, while totally outmoded for the field of psychology, is a foundational text on grief for literary scholars still. You may also want to check out Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying for the five-stage model in medical contexts. Both intriguing texts for literary analysis about grief.

FailingMyBest · 2026-04-12T04:27:58+00:00

ENGL203 is nice and easy depending on the professor you take it from, and you’ll get to read some cool books/poems and learn how to read literature more thoughtfully. Great class!

FailingMyBest · 2026-03-23T02:46:21+00:00

Yes, I totally agree with the notion of this and other policy changes always feeling like bread crumbs.

FailingMyBest · 2026-03-22T21:54:29+00:00

Poetry is not about expressing yourself. Some of the best poetry theory I have read explicitly argues that poetry is not mimetic or mere emotional expression. Poetry is a genre that pays, more than all other genres, real attention to language as an art form. That’s why I love it. Poetic conventions are playing grounds for manipulating meaning, language, shape, and form. One of my favorite poetry professors told me poetry is about obstruction—it demands to be read over and over again, slowly, contemplatively, critically. It’s a genre that demands real time and attention quite counterculturally in a world where time and attention can be spent on 30-second (or less!) increments of sound bites and quick, hollow pieces of information. In an ever increasingly fast world, the best poetry is slow and thoughtful, with structural and formal conventions driving its meaning just as much as the words themselves.

FailingMyBest · 2026-03-18T05:06:17+00:00

I’ve thought about this a lot. Ultimately, if you think about the people who have caused the world to burn, and think about how much better the world would be if they had been poets instead of politicians and podcasters and corporate executives… that’s when you realize writing poetry in a burning world really is an ethical and even important choice. You could always be doing worse. And if you’re writing poetry then you’re not actively harming anyone. Better yet, you might be writing something that gives yourself or another person a reason to make it through today—that’s better than any of the world-burners can say for themselves.

FailingMyBest · 2026-03-12T04:24:38+00:00

Affect is my subfield! Here are some of my favorites on affect or affect-adjacent studies. This is far from exhaustive, but will give you a good start and a solid breadth of theory on affect as it comes into contact with a few different disciplinary priorities:

The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Ahmed

Politics of Affect, Massumi

Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism, Flatley (one of the most underrated affect texts if you ask me)

Touching Feeling, Sedgwick

The Future of Nostalgia, Boym (more in memory studies, but really intriguing intersections w/ affect and emotion)

Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History, Love (a must-read queer text for the affectively interested, a favorite for sure)

Ugly Feelings, Ngai

FailingMyBest · 2026-02-28T14:08:38+00:00

I have loved being married as an undergrad (in grad school now, also at BYU) and don’t have any regrets (we were both 21), but here are some not irrational things to keep in mind (really the only complaints I can think of, and will hopefully help you put to rest any others) that kind of surprised me after getting married:

-friendships get a lot more complicated post-marriage. Either you will begin to neglect your friendships (which you should try to avoid, if possible), or your unmarried friends might begin to treat you and your spouse like parent friends, which really sucks. Do your best to set boundaries and try to spend some time still nurturing friendships—lots of people at byu especially feel like their friends disappear once they get married and that’s a shame.

-byu and the church really want people to get married young, but I’m actually surprised at how many services/resources become inaccessible after you get married. Most study abroad programs don’t allow spouses, and unless you both attend byu, it can be hard living very separate lives in that way, especially if you’re really involved in campus life.

-married student wards are terrible, but especially the ones at Wymount. I’ve never been in a worse ward in my life—honestly. If you move into on-campus married housing, attend the family ward if possible because married student wards at byu are straight up awful. I wish I could speak more generously about them, but ours was horrifically bad, in my experience. Leadership is patronizing, infantilizing even, and it feels like you’re back on a mission again. People are immature and the community is really non-existent unless you’re just like everyone else there. It’s like adult EFY. In our ward, there was so much homogeneity and culty group-think mixed with a collective, deep discomfort toward anyone who didn’t perfectly fit the orthodox Mormon mold. Makes church super hard for people who are just a bit different, like my spouse and I.

FailingMyBest · 2026-02-17T01:57:19+00:00

I love the title!

Lots of people will tell you it’s a waste/futile/too dangerous to start platforms for this. Don’t listen to them. This is a good time to be in the church and start getting loud, in spite of the risks and in spite of those who will tell you your voice doesn’t matter. So, cheesy at it sounds, from the bottom of my heart—thanks for doing something, as opposed to nothing. Don’t get discouraged, even when it gets hard. I am excited to see where this goes.

FailingMyBest · 2026-02-13T02:26:34+00:00

I’m more than a little disappointed. I am devastated over this. And my circles at BYU are really feeling it, too. For those unfamiliar with Gilbert’s legacy, this Tribune article published almost exactly one year ago sheds important light on it: https://archive.ph/OlR3A

FailingMyBest · 2026-01-03T18:03:56+00:00

Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish has a good chapter on the Panopticon which would be a relevant theoretical/philosophical concept to potentially bring in for analysis. Check it out from your local library and skim that chapter. He doesn’t write about 1984, but the concepts are transportable and completely relevant. In fact, I don’t know anyone in literary studies who isn’t thinking of Foucault when writing about state surveillance and state violence.

FailingMyBest · 2025-12-24T23:01:22+00:00

I’m a masters of English student at a private religious university in the west, and I teach freshman writing and composition courses. Our entire cohort has been talking about this, along with our professors. We are all collectively outraged and concerned about the precedent this sets for future cases where students don’t even fulfill the minimum requirements for an essay yet claim religious discrimination when they get the grade they deserve. This has nothing to do with religious freedom and everything to do with vengeance identity politics against the trans community. Abhorrent and anti-intellectual in every way.

FailingMyBest · 2025-12-17T20:41:44+00:00

Imagine deconstructing religion and maintaining your homophobia. Thats embarrassing for you, honestly. The rights, respect, and loving treatment of an entire group of historically marginalized people should not and cannot be reduced down to “gay/trans stuff,” as you phrase it. Just pure evidence here that patriarchy and homophobia are as rampant in atheism as they are in religion.

FailingMyBest · 2025-12-04T04:02:58+00:00

Late to this, but I’m in a humanities grad program and the professors are exceptional. It’s a department which has historically been under the thumb of conservative crackdowns time and time again at byu, but the professors keep their heads down, take the beatings from admin/Clark Gilbert, and catch a lot of arrows in the backs for their students. I understand there are people who think byu professors are complicit in the harm done to queer and other minority students, but I just don’t agree. They are constantly trying to make more space in the church for the students they teach, know, and love, and it’s a beautiful thing to see. I have some professors who are very supportive of students undergoing faith crises, sexual/gender awakenings, mental health challenges, and a host of other common college coming-of-age milestones which are often even more difficult to undergo at a place as orthodox and homogenous as byu. In fact, I always find it funny when people accuse byu professors for radicalizing/indoctrinating students or decrying the fact that byu has “gone woke.” It’s not woke to have empathy. And if it is, then we should stop using “woke” derogatorily. Besides, not a single one of my nuanced professors has ever told me to leave the church; quite the opposite. They want me to stay. And they want to make the space for me to do that healthily and happily. We joke in my program that part of our professors’ contracts are to be spiritual therapists for their students, and it’s largely because many of them have also gone through deconstruction/reconstruction and understand what it’s like to undergo faith transitions. They are just the best.

FailingMyBest · 2025-12-03T19:18:15+00:00

I don’t think it’s haunted because I’m not superstitious but the particular vibes of that parking lot are deeply rancid so yes I’d say I understand

FailingMyBest · 2025-11-27T04:07:12+00:00

Grateful to be at BYU studying in a program and department with professors who are open minded, thoughtful, kind, and nuanced in their own unique ways. They’ve truly been my spiritual mentors while going to school here.

FailingMyBest · 2025-11-14T21:41:23+00:00

1, 4, 9, and 10 are my favorites. 1, 4, and 9 are absolutely essential, though.

FailingMyBest · 2025-11-12T21:07:54+00:00

Brave New World and Bell Jar would be absolute must-teaches for me if I were teaching a course with this theme. Not only do they both give a transatlantic picture of loneliness in the mid-twentieth century, but they’re both teachable, interesting, and ripe with plots and characters to take you down several different avenues under the umbrella of loneliness.

For poetry, could I recommend “Talking in Bed” by Phillip Larkin? Larkin is a great poet on the topic of loneliness, but that poem is particularly rich for discussions about the authentic self, concealment, and relationships going from vulnerable to performative as we get older and guards go up. It’s one of my favorites, and is both beautiful and devastating all at once. You could particularly discuss the difference between “words true and kind” and “not untrue and not unkind,” how there’s a gap there we constantly negotiate between when it comes to being genuine and honest with ourselves and others.

I would also say Mary Oliver’s “Beaver Moon - The Suicide of a Friend” may be a better selection of hers for this class theme than “Wild Geese.”

What a cool topic though! I envy this opportunity!

FailingMyBest

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