This week, The Oracle Staff spoke to Honors American Literature, Creative Writing, and Academy English teacher, Ms. Hillary Domencic.

Q. How long have you taught at the high school? 

A. I’ve taught here since 2002, so this is my 24th year.

Q. What would your ideal last meal be?

A. Onigiri from 7-Eleven in Japan, because you can’t get those anywhere else.

Q. What was your first car?

A. A red geo metro. It was this tiny, little, three cylinder engine thing that was a stick shift. It got 47 miles a gallon, and I love that car. It was tiny and not powerful, but for a poor college student, it was amazing.

Q. What was the best concert you’ve been to?

A. I used to love to see the band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, which is a ska band, and Rusted Root was a local band that was really fun to go to see. I saw Radiohead open for another band, that’s how small they were back then. Recently, the most exciting concert I went to was The Pixies, because I’ve always loved them, so that was very cool. In the ’90s, I loved going to punk shows. Sometimes I’d go to shows three times a week.

Q. What was the most irresponsible purchase that you’ve made?

A. Oh God, it was so recent. The director, David Lynch, I bought his ukulele at an auction. He died last January, and some of his possessions were auctioned off in the summer. I wasn’t going to participate but then my husband was a terrible influence on me and was like, “Do it, buy it.”

Q. If you could take any movie or television show prop, what would it be?

A. I’d take the ceiling fan from the Palmer house in Twin Peaks.

Q. What’s your favorite place that you have visited?

A. Iceland, It was so spectacularly beautiful there. The people were so cool, and it’s such an interesting culture, and history, and everything. It just exceeded all of my expectations.

Q. How long do you think you’d survive in a zombie apocalypse, and how would you die?

A. Zero minutes, suicide. I don’t wanna be there for it, I don’t want to see it, I’m not involved.

Q. What is your favorite slang word?

A. Rizz. I had to have someone explain that to me a few years ago, and it was so charming when they did.

Q. If you could meet anyone dead or alive, who would it be?

A. David Lynch, but also I’d love to meet Walt Whitman. If I had to choose one, it’d probably be Walt Whitman.

Q. What is some advice that you would give your younger self?

A. Be okay with not being okay. Don’t force it. Be okay with where you are, and don’t feel shame or guilt over it. Don’t try to rush healing and getting over things. Be okay with it.

Q. What’s your best catching a cheater story?

A. I had this student who submitted an essay that was just so strange, the language was so weird. I could barely process what was happening, and I thought, I know he didn’t write this. I realized that one of the sources he cited was from a Turkish journal or something, and why would he have cited a Turkish journal? So then I thought, “let me put this into google translate,” and sure enough an essay on The Great Gatsby, that someone had written in Turkish came up. I thought he had put it into Google Translate and then turned it in. I was like, that’s insane. But when I confronted him about it, he was like, “I paid a service, I bought the essay online.”