Tag Archives: music

Ben Grange

I’m a writer, an amateur composer, a husband and father, and I’m an English Major.

Me and my wife on the Provo River trail.

I decided to be an English major to help my writing. I love to write young adult contemporary fiction and fantasy. As an English major, I’ve explored many other avenues of writing, and I’ve come across many inspirational texts that have generated thousands of ideas in my mind. As a creative person, completing a major which is highly analytic has molded my brain to be a critic of my own work. This analytical mind set has transferred to multiple facets of my life, some of which include my career path, my music composition, my writing, my artwork, and my family. It’s made me a rounder individual, more dimensional, and more intellectual.

I’ve been an English major for the last two years. My career path changed from “”I don’t know what I want to do,”” to “”I want to go into children’s and young adult book publishing”” in that time. Through opportunities opened to me through the school, I’ve done four internships in the publishing world, which has prepared me to go on after graduation and get a job in a competitive field. Becoming an English Major was the best thing I could have done, and I’m so glad I did it.

One of my favorite books is Harry Potter.

Links:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie-T7Ttchjs&list=UUXqN-BQSOQ_QBAlSnhGMP8w

Instagram: http://instagram.com/ben_l_grange

I’m Mallory Duffield

I’m a British dreamer, photographer, and market lover. And I’m an English major.

Forever dreaming about the beautiful English countryside.

One of my all time favorite quotes is from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said, “That is part of the beauty of literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” I’m becoming an English major because I’m a word nerd. I am completely obsessed with the power of words. They have always been a major part of my life, whether they were coming from my mouth or from the pen. I believe that words have a special power to touch the hearts of others, resonating deep within them and allowing them to connect with others.

To me, nothing is better than the feeling you get after reading a book that has left you utterly speechless or finally writing a poem just right. I could spend hours discussing Shakespeare or England or a new poem I heard in class the other day. Red pen on white paper is one of my favorite things. John Keating in Dead Poets Society was speaking to me when he said, “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

One of my favorite books is William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.

You can check out my blog at sincerelymad.blogspot.com!

Hi, I’m Katie!

1 Reply

I’m a pie maker, a “tree-hugger,” a musician, and a lover of Assyrian art. And I’m an English major.

Katie getting caught in the rain . . . again

When I’m not cooking curry or eating desserts, I’m usually traveling. I’ve been all over the United States, from California Adventures to Disneyworld, from Pike’s Peak to Times Square. Last Fall semester, I explored France, Italy, Scotland, and England, enjoying art, food, music, and cultures different from my own. While I love doing yoga in ancient ruins and being enraptured by nature, I’ve learned that reading—as cliché as this is going to seem—is another way to go on adventures by exploring how a writer expresses what it means to be human.

I first decided to be an English major because I had lofty goals: I wanted to be a writer and to change the world and to make people happy. Although these are still my goals, I’ve realized that there are many ways to learn and to feel that I had never before realized were possible. Learning how to think and learning new perspectives has enabled me to stretch myself—as a scholar, as a citizen, as a friend, as a daughter, as a child of God. Our universal status of all being children of a loving and an all-powerful God does not mean that our existence here on earth is completely and totally universal.

Modernist writers Virginia Woolf and James Joyce show me their world of determining who you are in a broken, changing world. The experiences of Buchi Emecheta and Ama Ata Aidoo show me their world of being African and the trials they endured. John D. Fitzgerald, just as much as F. Scott Fitzgerald, shows me a world of what it can mean to be American, of struggling in the American West or with the American dream. And there’s a beauty in that adventure, that universal search of what it means to be human.

One of my favorite books is Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning

Check out my blog! The bippity boppity beautiful blog

Katie serves as secretary for the English Society

BYU English Society

A club for English Majors