A favorite quote: “My religion is kindness.” –The Dalai Lama
Your memorable experiences in English: I can’t really pick a favorite English class or professor because all have been wonderful, but I think that Shakespeare After 1600 with Joe Porter was one particularly influential experience for me. The way Dr. Porter talked about the plays we read—with so much awe, admiration, andgenuine delight—was truly inspiring. His appreciation of language had a contagious effect on me and I think helped me to go about reading and writing in a more playful and wondering way. I also particularly enjoyed all of my creative writing classesat Duke—the fantastic contemporary readings we did, the thoroughfeedback that helped me become a much better writer, the workshops where I felt like I got to know my classmates through their poetry, stories, and personal essays. I’m also extremely grateful for a number of enlightening Flunches and office hoursconversations with my English professors, who have all helped me better understandand appreciatethe value, fun, and broader implications of literary analysisand writing.
Farewell wishes for your classmates: I don’t know all of you but wish that I did since all of youseem like cool and interesting people to get to know. To the people I do know, I’ve enjoyed our acquaintanceships and have learned lots from you in seminars and conversations outside class, too—thank you for your insight and wisdom. To everyone, best of luck with everything! I hope that you all lead meaningful and fulfilling lives. I think that our experiences as English majors—learning to grapple with nuance,practicing empathy through reading and writing—will help us all to do that.
Any awards or honors you’ve won during your time at Duke: Anne Flexner Award for Fiction, Psychology Department Faculty Scholars Award nominee
Your plans/hopes for the future (what’s next for you after Duke?): I plan to go into clinical psychology research and practice. And I plan to keep doing lots of reading and writing. : )
Other thoughts you’d like to share about what it’s like to be an English major: Thank you to everyonein the Duke English Department for being so deliberate, brilliant, kind, and inspiring.
Faculty Remarks:
Dear Caroline,
I wish I could congratulate you in person on the special occasion of your graduation, but I will have to settle for a note. It has been such a pleasure getting to know you at Duke; I feel very fortunate that you took Environment in Literature, Law, and Science during your sophomore year, which gave me the chance to meet you and to get a sense of your wonderful commitments—your environmentalism, your sense of social justice, your thoughtfulness and kindness. As I was thinking about what I wanted to say to you in this message, I went back and read your essays for class, and I was impressed by the depth of analysis, but also the independence of your thinking. I really like the way you connected both Prospero’s restlessness and curiosity and the violence of his magic to colonialism—especially how that curiosity can become the temptation for power. It shows what I have seen in you: your mature sense of the complexity of the world. Your second paper—on Darwin and Emerson—really blew me away; I love the way you found in Darwin’s“awed awareness” (a great term) an ecological perspective that challenges the explicit Malthusian message of life as struggle and competition. I think you’re right that his deepest commitments were to that vision of interconnectedness. But what I especially like about your reading is what it reveals about the sensitivity and positivity you bring to literature and to life: you genuinely look for the beauty in the world and in people, and that is a rare gift. And I admire that you are willing to offer a reading that is faithful to the work regardless of the prevailing view. Please keep trusting yourself. You have wonderful instincts and wonderful values, and they will serve you well in whatever you choose to do. I am very glad to have gotten to know you, through flunch as well as class. I hope and expect you will continue to work on environmental issues; I feel more confident about the future when I think of you (and people like you) on the job. And I very much look forward to following what I know will be extraordinary achievement in whatever you decide to do.
I also enjoyed reading online about your being the top finishing female runner in the Krispy Kreme Challenge yourfirst year at Duke. Way to go! And I hope the doughnuts were delicious!
So, congratulations, Caroline, on this milestone, and please know that I and many others at Duke will be cheering from the sidelines at whatever figurative races you decide to rungoing forward. Please keep in touch!
Best wishes,
Priscilla Wald
