May 27th, 2014 §
Lauren Rogers is currently a grad student in SPU’s School of Business and Economics, having graduated last June from SPU with a Bachelors degree in English. She chose English as her undergraduate major because it was a subject she enjoyed, having always been passionate about stories and writing. As an English major, Lauren particularly appreciated the English department faculty, claiming that it is “better than [that at] any university anywhere,” though she also said she might be biased.
Upon graduating, Lauren decided she wanted to go into business but needed to figure out how to mesh that desire with her passion for writing, relationship building, and creativity. Now Lauren realizes she wasn’t alone, since “many English majors do not understand how to effectively apply their skills in business.” SPU’s MA program in sustainable business practices has helped her identify where to go next, which is a career in digital marketing.
For Lauren, degrees in English and business are a great combination because a student comes out of the two programs not merely a skilled communicator, but one with the technical skills for many positions in business. To prepare for life after her next graduation, Lauren is currently serving as a marketing intern at Zulily. The business program has helped Lauren apply the skills from her English degree to the business world.
May 22nd, 2014 §
May 22nd, 2014 §
Ashley Boucher, from Beaverton, Oregon, is majoring in creative writing, focusing in non-fiction, and minoring in French. Though it took her a while to find her major, she settled on English because she always got good grades in this area (improving her graduate school options) and had always enjoyed English and literature. Ashley says she is minoring in French because “Je suis francais and I love the culture and language.”
Since her time at Seattle Pacific University, her favorite classes have been Elements of Narrative with Dr. VanZanten because it is a chance to get into the “nitty-gritty” of story-telling and Shakespeare with Dr. Reinsma because of the emotion and–“what else?–tension” created by the plays.
Outside school, you will probably find Ashley dancing, which she has been doing since she was 12. For her, Ashley says, dancing “is a release, like writing can be, and I definitely could not live without it.” Her dream job would be as traveling yoga instructor, writing about yoga retreats, and later editing either a fashion or a dance magazine, so she plans to move back to Portland for the first step in that direction: training to be a yoga instructor.
Her advice to students, “It is important to balance being a student with being a person, which is surprisingly easy to do.” She also recommends taking advanced grammar and to study abroad as many times as possible. “Now is the time to go. So GO!”
May 21st, 2014 §
Tomorrow, May 22, 3-3:50 p.m. in the Library Reading Room award-winning poet and SPU Professor of English Jennifer Maier will read from her latest book of poetry Now, Now. These poems are concerned with questions of time and memory: how our perceptions are shaped, moment by moment, within the continuous meeting of past and future—of what happened, and what has not yet happened, but will.
May 21st, 2014 §
Gabriel Carlo Much is an English literature major and honors student, focusing on feminist literary theory. He is from Brier, WA, and when he came to Seattle Pacific University, Gabe says, ” I had two goals for my education: to become a better musician, and to become a better writer.” So he joined the Gospel Choir and the Worship & Arts Ensemble and decided to major in English. His favorite course has been the history of literary theory with Dr. Chaney because “it gave me an entirely new perspective on literature and even my own faith.”
Gabe continues, “It was a wild ten weeks, and will forever be a formative piece of my world-view.” His favorite memory of the English major comes from this course “when Dr Chaney demonstrated in a class on Modernity that rationality and reason (the commitments of Enlightenment thinkers and deep-seeded roots of our own thought as their intellectual children) were static forces, able to be paralleled with a metaphor of death. That moment, her writing a few words on a whiteboard in the window-less dungeon of Otto Miller, was a turning point for my faith.”
His dream job would be a balance between freelance musician, teacher, and writer/academic, but next he plans on “playing as much music as possible, and pursuing various experiences along the way (a winter of skiing, a couple of summers backpacking, a year or two teaching English abroad, etc).”
Gabe encourages other students to think about the skills they want to enhance or learn during college and choose a major accordingly–assuming they don’t have a specific career in mind that requires a certain major. He says, “Consider your four(ish) years the blessed space and time in which you can do just that, without (or with fewer of) the obligations of adulthood.”
