About This Place
Built in public, on purpose.
A self-designed liberal arts education, built from scratch by someone who did the thing and still felt like something was missing.
Bopus Ergo Sum · Est. 2026
About This Place
A self-designed liberal arts education, built from scratch by someone who did the thing and still felt like something was missing.
Bopus Ergo Sum · Est. 2026
Origin Story
Super Bowl weekend, February 2026. The game was on. The news was not good. The family was processing the state of American democracy alongside the score. Somewhere in the middle of that, a question surfaced:
What if I could redesign my education, knowing what I know now?
Not "what if I went to Brown at 18." I did that. I studied Comparative Literature (Russian, Swedish, English, Czech) under Professor Arnold Weinstein, who taught close reading like it was a survival skill. He was right. I just didn't know why yet.
The question was something else: What if I could go back to Brown with what I know now? What would I study? What would I need? What does an education look like when you already know the world is complicated, the institutions are fragile, and a transcript won't save you?
BoopUniversity is the answer I built.
We're in overshoot. Institutions are failing because growth is ending. Here's how to see clearly, what's realistic, and how to build resilience in descent.— The BoopU Thesis
Drawing on — not necessarily endorsed by
This isn't pessimism. It's the opposite. Pessimism looks away. This is about learning to look directly at what's happening — at systems and the manipulation underneath them, at the gap between the story we're told and the story actually unfolding — and building the capacity to act usefully anyway.
Pattern recognition is the skill underneath the other skills. BoopUniversity teaches it.
Independence Statement
BoopUniversity is an independent educational project. The thinkers and authors whose work we cite are not affiliated with BoopU and have not endorsed this curriculum.
Where someone is cited here, that citation is BoopU's — chosen by us, framed by us. The work cited stands on its own; our use of it does not signal anything about the author's relationship to BoopU.
The Human Behind This
I spent 15 years as a forensic accountant: following the money, finding the pattern in the mess, building the case from the evidence up. That work teaches you something the classroom doesn't: how to read what's actually happening, not just what someone says is happening.
Then 10 years designing professional education. The kind that has to be accurate, rigorous, and defensible. CPAs, lawyers, financial professionals. I know how to build a curriculum. I know how to sequence ideas. I know how to write for people who are smart and busy and don't have time for my nonsense.
BoopUniversity is that same rigor, applied to the education I'd build if I were starting from the questions instead of the credentials.
Brown University — Comparative Literature. Russian, Swedish, English, Czech. Close reading as a way of life.
JD · MBA · CPA — plus MS Accounting. History of CFE, CFF, CGMA (can't claim them as current unless you're paying enormous membership fees). Different domains, all trained the same skill: follow the money. Blah blah blah.
15 years in forensic accounting. 10 years designing continuing professional education. Curriculum architecture, rigorous sourcing, practitioner utility.
Building the degree I'd design now. In public. Open source. Fork it, adapt it, make it yours.
What BoopU Actually Teaches
Every course, every reading list, every project feeds into three core capacities. Not facts. Not credentials. Capacities — the kind that don't expire when the information does. These three run as thread tags across every course in the catalog.
How systems behave. How manipulation works. How to see the shape of something before you know its name. The skill that transfers to everything.
How to read what's actually happening — in texts, in institutions, in your own thinking. Distinguishing the story being told from the story that's true.
What to do with what you see. Resilience in descent. Building capacity, not just awareness. The world is complicated; that's not a reason to stop.
Ring 0 builds the instrument — attention, cognition, argument. Rings 1 and 2 open the field and build the architecture. The mosaics run horizontally across all rings by theme. The degree you design. The education you need.
The Faculty
13.3-year-old Treeing Walker Coonhound mix. Foucaultian gravitas. Has been tracking what matters and ignoring what doesn't for his entire career. Naps are part of the pedagogy. Knows more than he lets on.
BoopU's specialist in romantasy, canonical revision, and close reading of texts that people insist aren't serious. Teaches the Shenany Blenany seminars. Makes literary theory accessible without making it small.
Collie mix / German Shepherd-Pyrenees. Pacifist. Carries herself like she is personally responsible for the wellbeing of everyone in the room, and is not wrong about this. Likely the torch-bearer.
Loud-ass Siamese cat. Opinions. Has resolved all the major philosophical questions and finds your continued uncertainty with them exhausting. Will judge your argument. Does not grade on a curve.
Nocturnal truth whisperer. Mysterious. Sees things from angles the day doesn't allow. His publications are confidential. His presence is felt.
Brown University, Comparative Literature. JD, MBA, CPA. 15 years following the money as a forensic accountant. 10 years building rigorous professional education. Currently building the degree she would have designed the first time had she known.
Also in the Boop Universe
BoopUniversity is the formal educational arm of the WMT Tank — a hybrid creative incubator, philosophical dog park, and trap for ideas before they float away.
The animals are involved. More is coming.
* Campus currency. E Pluribus Woofum.