Masochist's Delight

Want to spend an afternoon cringing? Why not revisit some of your old college and high school writing? A sampling of titles, for your amusement:

• Vital Tedium: Homer's Catalog of Ships
• Faithful Five-Fold: Gawain Deserves the Pentangle
• Crying for the Moon (on Plato's Symposium)
• Faces of the Ivory Virgin: Tracing the Pygmalion Narrative in Drama
  
• Then there's my thesis "Privatizing the Police: Historical Perspectives and Future Projections for Market Solutions in Policing," submitted just after DHS nationalized airport security.

Unfortunately lost to the ages: my Lit 10 sonnet, also Pygmalion themed and with an unfortunate and unintended allusion to a demeaning sexual practice, and my college admissions essay, which was about, no joke, jelly shoes and conformity.

Actual first lines from a high school poem, which I think was published in our literary magazine:

The shell of your translucent face
lighted from within
the moonglow lanterns of your eyes
reflected on your skin.

Moonglow, people! This is horrifying.