People to Know at Messiah College

Name: Elizabeth Thompson
Year: Senior
Major: Ethnomusicology with a concentration in Middle Eastern Studies
Campus Organization you represent: N/A What dish of food do you believe best represents your personality?:

Um, maybe hummus? It is adaptable, and I can't think of anything that it doesn't go well enough with. You can put it on a sandwich or just eat it with baby snap peas. It can be bland sometimes, but then you can mix other things with it to give it more taste. If not that, filet mignon. Rare.

What was the last film you watched, and liked?:

The last film that I watched was The Departed. I had a hankering to watch it again for about a month, and when I finally did, it was even better than I had remembered. Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese actually make me enjoy listening to The Dropkick Murphys. Plus, any films having to do with the mafia and organized crime have a head start when it comes to my positive critique.

What has college taught you (in one sentence)?:

College, that all-encompassing word of experience, learning, and coincidence, has taught me that I must pursue exactly what I want to learn about the world and exactly how I want to be a party to it; it is easy to sit in plastic chairs and absorb lecture after lecture, but it is another thing to learn and another thing to do.

Do you read books? Why?:

I like letters and ink on pages. I like how letters propagate and induce meaning by dancing with one another. I like when I can hold simple materials in my hands and that those materials represent a world not my own or maybe my own. Books are powerful and humble - so I read them.

What was the most awkward/funniest moment of your study abroad experience?:

Most is never most when everything is most, but this is pretty funny: driving from Israel into Egypt on the last day of our month of traveling, oh, whereabouts the Fertile Crescent, our bus broke down an hour outside of Cairo. Being used to this sort of thing, we students piled out of the bus and flooded the sandy roadside. Games of rockball and throwing matches ensued. As the sun set, some of us gathered together and sang surrounding an imaginary campfire, flames flying so high. "Hotel California" was one tune I remember vividly. On that dark desert highway with cool wind in my hair, it was such a lovely place, such a lovely place.

Where is last place on Earth you would want to live?:

Probably Detroit.

If you could speak a foreign language fluently, what would it be?:

Arabic. It is romantic and consonant without all that Indo-European moonshine.

In your opinion, does the NRA have a legitimate fear that Obama will take our right to bear arms away?:

I hope so.

Which is more powerful: money or words?:

If I have money, I can show people that I have money by spreading my billfold. Whether I have money or not, I can tell people I have money with words. And sometimes they believe me. In other words...you can lie with words. Can you lie with money?

What is a hipster?:

A hipster is an enigma and that is what they like to be. They are easy to figure out, but they are like a bacterial strain that morphs in and around antibiotics to survive. Sometimes the government, pop culture, consumption, and bikes with gears are the antibiotics. But hipsters peddle, they protest, and they buy second-hand and local. They listen to good music and have pretentious tastes in the arts. Like any subgenre, there are good hipsters, and there are poor hipsters, and sometimes it is easy to tell the difference. I might be a hipster. See Katherine Vorbeck for more information. [Note: She is not a hipster, but she writes outstanding papers about them.]