At the end of high school, I attended the Senior Awards ceremony and was surprised to see in the program that I would be receiving the Yale Book Award.

I believe three Ivy League Book Awards exist: the Harvard Book Award, the Yale Book Award, and the Brown Book Award. Basically, what happens is that teachers nominate junior-year students from their school for these Book Awards and the respective local alumni associations decide on who gets the award at each school.

Apparently, the Yale Club of Silicon Valley thought I had "outstanding personal character and intellectual promise." The actual award was a giant Yale Shakespeare: The Complete Works book with a nameplate inside.

I don't know what compelled them to give the award to me. Earlier that year, I had an interview for Yale with two local (and married) Yale alumni:

Yale Alumni: So what do you think about a liberal arts education?
Me: I think a well-rounded knowledge of the liberal arts is useless. Why waste time and money on classes that you didn't choose, classes that are shoved down your throat as a stupid ass "core curriculum"? Molecular cellular biologists read de Beauvoir, art history buffs memorize arpeggios, future French lit professors struggle through two years of calculus — it's ridiculous and impractical! The primary advantage of college is supposed to be that you learn how to look for what you want to learn.
Yale Alumni: Well, Yale is a liberal arts school, you know…
Me: Oh.

Needless to say, I was rejected from Yale.

Moreover, ten days after I received my Yale Book Award, I would witness Mr. Neely, another local Yale alumni, say to Mr. Farrell, who was sitting right next to me at the time, "Ugh. Jon Yu disgusts me. Everything about him. I can't even look at him while I'm saying this."

Good times.

Anyway, I've had this giant Shakespeare book now for three years and it looks like I'm finally gonna…open it.

I finalized my schedule for winter quarter 2003. I'm taking English 118 (Literature and Film: Beyond Adaptation) and the two required Shakespeare classes for my major: English 142B (Shakespeare: Later Plays) from 2:00 – 3:50 PM followed immediately by 142A (Shakespeare: Poems and Early Plays) from 4:00 – 5:50 PM. Four hours of straight lecturing on the complete works of Shakespeare, two days a week, for ten weeks, with the added bonus of having the three-hour finals for both Shakespeare classes on the same day. I look forward to cramping my hand and breaking my back.

March 21 = schweetness.

I saw this in a full-page ad for the movie Solaris:

Fox must be desperate for good reviews when it prints the SAME EXACT BLURBS right next to each other. And they're not even in order! Ebert's comment is clearly in response to Roeper's comment! Roeper's blurb should be on the left! Cheese and crackers…