Brought to you by the editors of the Core
 
 
 
 
 
 
Winter 2017
 
 
 
 
 
 
Dear Reader,

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the College Review. It has come to our attention that some readers would prefer to reserve paper for books; others require it only for tissues, to wipe their eyes while mourning the death of print. So please accept this first installment of our quarterly newsletter, emailed for your convenience.--Eds.
 
01 Dean Boyer: Words of wisdom from the Habsburgs
02 Fact-checking the faculty
03 A meerkat's day
04 Q&A: The Supernatural star with 2.62 million fans
05 Recipe: Stale bread pancakes
06 But wait, there's more!
 
 
 
 
 
 
01
 
 
 
 
 
 
Words of wisdom from the Habsburgs
 
If you're looking for career or life advice, the internet has no shortage: Make a big impact immediately. Take risks. Work harder than anyone else. Never eat lunch alone.
 
 
The internet has been around for less than 50 years. The Habsburg Empire, on the other hand, lasted 600. And its lessons are very different, says John W. Boyer, AM'69, PhD'75, dean of the College and Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History. Rather than encouraging you to be an "arriviste scrambler," Boyer says, here's what the Habsburgs might suggest.
 
1   Be loyal to your friends and family. When the Holy Roman emperor Francis II (1768-1835) was told that a certain courtier was a patriot, he said, "Yes, but is he a patriot for me?" To the Habsburgs, loyalty was paramount. "They had a whole system of honors, carefully crafted to reward their friends," says Boyer, "and--by the absence of rewards--to punish their enemies."
 
2   It's not all about you. "The people who served the emperor and the empire were working, in their mind, on behalf of a larger cause," says Boyer. "The Habsburg Empire was a world of honor, of loyalty, of service." Find something more significant than worldly success to care about--social change, religion, friendship--to give your life meaning.
 
3   Don't suck up to superiors. "There was a sense in the imperial bureaucracy that you should do your job, rather than save your job," says Boyer. When you start a new job, you might think the best way to advance is to curry favor and always say yes, even if you should say no. "But that's not how an institution functions well."
 
4   If you find a job you like, keep it. Franz Joseph (1830-1916) became emperor at age 18 and served until he died. "The longer he did the job, the better he got at it," says Boyer, and his constant presence brought stability to the empire. Similarly, "you don't have to think of your career as a bricolage of little way stations. If you like your job and you're good at it, why not stick around for a while?"
 
5   But don't make impetuous decisions. Although Franz Joseph managed his empire "rather well," says Boyer, "at the end he made the very unfortunate decision to start World War I." The emperor knew that Russia, France, Germany, and other countries would be drawn in. But he was furious about the assassination of his successor, archduke Franz Ferdinand, "whom he didn't like anyway," says Boyer. "Why avenge someone you don't even like?"

World War I destroyed the Habsburg Empire and set the stage for World War II. "Without getting into counterfactualism," says Boyer, "it would have been better to have taken a little more time and not allowed emotion to govern his decision."
 
 
 
 
 
 
02
 
 
 
 
 
 
Did he really say that?
 
 
  Quotation mark  
   
  Whenever I feel the urge to exercise I lie down until it goes away.  
  --Robert Maynard Hutchins (UChicago president and chancellor, 1929-51)  
 
 
  Quotation mark  
   
  When I went around the country, I tried to combat this 'quiz kid' impression. I want a broad cross-section of young, healthy Americans.  
  --Lawrence Kimpton (UChicago chancellor, 1951-60)  
 
 
  Answers  
  Hutchins: No. Widely misattributed.  
  Kimpton: Yes.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
03
 
 
 
 
 
 
A meerkat's day
 
 
What does an ideal day look like for a meerkat? 40% feeding, 15% locomotion, 15% other solitary, 15% social, 10% active, 5% not visible.
 
Last summer Odyssey Scholar Clara Stahlmann Roeder, Class of 2017, had a Metcalf Internship at the Lincoln Park Zoo. She looked at how different exhibit spaces and enrichment items affected meerkat behavior.
 
"My favorite part has been getting to know the individual meerkats," she says. "First, it was just telling them apart physically, but now I'm getting to know their personalities." A biological sciences major, Stahlmann Roeder is writing her senior thesis about the meerkats.
 
 
 
 
 
 
04
 
 
 
 
 
 
Misha!
 
An interview with Dmitri Krushnic, AB'97 (sociology), aka Misha Collins, aka Castiel on the TV show Supernatural, now in its 12th season.
 
Where did you live when you were in the College? Burton-Judson. I remember having the meal plan, and I ate like a famine was coming every day. I gained 30 pounds in nine months.
 
I moved from B-J to 5401 South Woodlawn with five roommates. One of my roommates had a relative who had a lead on a Best Western hotel that was going out of business. After each person got a mattress, we had five or six left over so we stacked them up in our living room and had wobbly mattress wrestling matches.
 
 
Collins wears a leisure suit made up of cheddar, Swiss, and Cheez Whiz for GISHWHES 2012.
 
You're well known for your charity scavenger hunt, GISHWHES (Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen). Did you do Scav all four years? Three years, I believe. By my senior year, I was too single-mindedly focused on my academics to be bothered with such childish pursuits.
 
The first year was with a Burton-Judson team. My girlfriend at the time (wife now), Vicki Vantoch (still Vicki Vantoch [AB'97 (sociology)]), was on a different team--Breckenridge, I believe. She was hard-core. One of the items in that year's Scav ('93, as I recall) was three live sheep. Vicki came over to B-J and asked if she could borrow my car. I said, "What for?" She said, "I found a farm in Wisconsin that will let us borrow three lambs for Scav." I said, "No way. (a) You're on a competing team and (b) I have a firm no-sheep-in-my-car rule." She cuddled up and waited for me to fall asleep, then took the keys. There was some karmic retribution, though: a third team stole the sheep from her and when Vicki's team won, they gave me the winning pot because they felt bad that the sheep had eaten the upholstery in my car.
 
I remember trying to acquire a Russian MiG fighter jet and failing. That was a crushing disappointment.
 
How did you and Vicki end up at UChicago together? My wife and I met in high school. The only college we both applied to was U of C. I think we genuinely independently arrived at the conclusion that Chicago was the best option. I remember visiting the school and staying up late with some very smart students and thinking, "I want to spend four years surrounded by people like these."
 
Most memorable professors/classes? I loved John Mearsheimer's Military Strategy, Donald Levine's (AB'50, AM'54, PhD'57) Conflict Theory and Aikido. Charles Elder (AM'83, PhD'91) taught a seminar on Marx/Weber and his patience and encouragement made an enormous impact on me.
 
You have 2.62 million Twitter followers. Did you ever use early social media platforms, like MySpace or Friendster? I never used any of those. I started a Twitter account on a lark just to satirize self-absorbed celebrity. Ironically, in the ensuing years, I have actually become a self-absorbed celebrity.
 
Read more about Collins and his passionate fandom in the Winter/17 issue of the Core.
 
 
 
 
 
 
05
 
 
 
 
 
 
French toast, extreme edition
 
 
From Hows and Whys of French Cooking (UChicago Press, 1974) by Alma Lach, EX'38. See the online version of the exhibit Alma Lach's Kitchen: Transforming Taste, organized by the Regenstein Library's Special Collections Research Center.
 
Les Galopins
 
Ingredients
1 1/2 c milk
6 slices bread or 6-inch piece of French bread
2 eggs
1/4 tsp vanilla
dash salt
1/8 lb butter
sugar
 
Directions
Bring milk to a boil. Take from heat. Add the bread and let soak 10 minutes. Mash with a fork and then beat with a whisk. Beat eggs, vanilla, and salt together until light. Add to the bread mixture. Beat. The mixture should have the consistency of pancake batter--a little on the moist side. Adjust thickness with more bread or milk.
 
Heat a skillet. Add a piece of butter. Spoon batter into the skillet to make pancakes. Brown both sides. Serve topped with more butter and sprinkled with sugar.
 
 
 
 
 
 
06
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
From the archive: Miss University of Chicago Janice Gump (née Porter), LAB'52, AB'56, and her court at the Washington Prom in February 1954.
 
Miscellaneous topics we've been mulling lately: Why gang members are on YouTube. The "fervently moderate" Republican senator Charles H. Percy, AB'41. The furious tweet storms of wikipedia brown, aka Eve Ewing, AB'08. Playing with Lego for a living. Does William Rainey Harper really belong in Ravenclaw?