Kirsten Bolinger
Public relations assistant
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

A metropolitan daily newspaper has awarded an Avondale College information technology lecturer a doctorate for identifying an obscure quote in one of its columns.

The Sydney Morning Herald challenged readers to find the origin of a quote that introduced its Column 8 column on April 12. The quote read, “Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why.”

After reading the column at two thirty that morning, Dr Maurice Ashton from the Faculty of Business and Information Technology, searched the Internet using the skills he teaches his students. “I doubt that I am the first, but if I am it will be a tribute to Google and insomnia rather than any great literary knowledge,” wrote Maurice in his email to Column 8. The Herald published Maurice’s response the following day and conferred the title, C8PhD.

However, Herald readers were not as obliging of those who, as Column 8 put it, “Google their way to academic glory.” One suggested conferring an honorary degree because “an honorary degree is awarded to people who haven’t done any work for it.”

Maurice describes the experience as “a bit of fun.” “The question now is, How will I include the C8PhD on my scholarly activities?”

By the way, the quote came from the poem, Spring and Fall—To a Young Child, by Gerard Manley Hopkins.