English

What can I say about Taylor White, or T White, as I know her? I first met T last fall, when she took my Shakespeare course. I was a bit nervous at the beginning of the fall semester; I’d been on teaching leave the year before, so my classroom skills felt rusty. Scanning my rows of students, whose faces and names I did not yet know, I quickly homed in on T. She was cheerful, focused, and made me feel like I was saying something interesting about Shakespeare. The more I got to know T, the more there was to admire. T regularly attended my office hours—she was one of those students who begin assignments in advance, not just because she wants to do well on them, but because she’s honestly interested in mulling over ideas. Time and again, her enthusiasm and thinking paid off—whether writing on rape, fountains, and Ovidian reference in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus; disability and the ambiguity of insult in Richard III; or the physicality of dancing gangs at the opening of West Side Story, T’s work was top notch. I would say that T’s the Platonic ideal of an English major, but that term seems too rigid and remote for her. She’s quirky, friendly, and smiles a lot; in the classroom, she combines acute attention to textual detail with camaraderie and laughter. Working with her is such a pleasure! She’s a real credit to our department, and I’m so happy that we’re awarding her the Karyn L. Evans scholarship. She deserves it!

When Sarah Polley, an actor-turned-filmmaker whose 2012 documentary Stories We Tell ranks among the greatest motion pictures of all time, was asked what the “trick” to writing is (during a recent interview), she responded, “Discipline. And readers who are honest with you.” Polley’s response sums up my attitude toward — and admiration for — Annie Egghart, a CSU student in the English Department who has consistently demonstrated the level of commitment needed to succeed as a writer as well as an openness to honest appraisal that hints at her maturity. Indeed, “discipline” is the word that immediately leaps to mind when I think of Annie’s work as a student who understands that both diligent practice and fearless experimentation are needed to hone one’s craft and cultivate a love for storytelling that is infectious.

I first began to appreciate Annie’s capacity for self-discipline in my Screenwriting as Communication class, where she dazzled me and her peers (who, like her, were new to the topic) with a feature-length screenplay that she developed incrementally: from a short logline to a longer outline to a formal treatment to a three-act script over a period of four months. Her completed screenplay, a 100-page romantic comedy that showcases her familiarity with the genre as well as her interest in deconstructing its most problematic gendered tropes, is among the best such works that I have read by a student.

Since that time, Annie has taken two other courses that I have taught, one devoted to international horror films and the other to women filmmakers. In each of these classes she has demonstrated critical-analytical skills that are just as impressive as her creative writing abilities. I am confident that Annie will go far, professionally, regardless of which path she takes; though I hope that others will have the opportunity to see, as I have, how talented she is as a writer. There is enough evidence, just from her work at CSU, to suggest that Annie will achieve a similar degree of success as filmmaker Sarah Polley, lighting up the world with her perceptive takes on the “stories we tell” and inspiring us all in the process.