English Department

Kajal brings her diligence, insight, and dedication to excellence to class every day. Her passionate love of literature and desire to perfect her own writing are evident in every paper she writes and report she delivers. She uses every assignment as an opportunity to explore a topic of interest to her, as when she investigated the use of shadow screens as a vehicle for non-verbal storytelling when deciding to shoot a shadow film for her Macbeth project. A leader in class discussion, Kajal helps inspire her classmates to take intellectual risks and delve deep into the literature we read.

JEREMY RATNER

Jeremy Ratner embodies excellence in the English classroom. When working with classmates, he is always supportive, carrying himself as a community role model. His contributions to the class are invariably thoughtful, as well as provoking. He never just repeats information but always offers unique perspectives to the class. In fact, more than once, Jeremy’s classmates voted him to be a leader in class Socratic seminars, showing the respect his peers grant to him. Everyone can see the extensive detail he puts into his work. No matter the assignment, Jeremy refuses to submit work that does not reach his own rigorous standards - whether adapting the plot and themes of Macbeth into a chess game or teaching himself to draw in order to create his own graphic novel for a project on Maus. These small examples exemplify the excellence of execution that Jeremy exudes in the academic arena.