"Good heavens, Archibald, do you think that could be pornography?" - Reginald
Elizabeth Jordan "EJ" Baker
The Chair
elizabjb@sas.upenn.edu
EJ Baker is a dreamer in the grand tradition of dreamers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Susan Boyle. In EJ's dream, she runs Quadramics in a firm but loving manner, in the style of Dr. Clifford Huxtable, and there are always enough men to do 1776 for the Spring Fling musical. Every spring. And in her dream, when her time at Penn comes to an end, she will join the European touring company of Cats, dancing and meowing until she can dance and meow no more and then she will settle down with her husband, Jason Segel, and perform musicals in their living room with their collection of puppets and children.
But in the immortal words of Biggie...it was all a dream. And EJ faces the grim reality that she is less Cliff Huxtable and more Lucille Bluth and she must be contented with reading TS Eliot in a seminar on modernism and not in the Cat Chorus. And Q will never do 1776, so she might as well just go down to Constitution Hall with Norbitz and sing about our founding fathers herself. And she will. For you can say many things about the chair of Quadramics, but you cannot say she doesn't try. This indomitable spirit is a hallmark of this organization, and if you are a scrappy dreamer, you may have found a home. Or, as EJ occasionally fears, you may have made a huge mistake.