Think beyond ...

Senior
Major: English
Minor: Writing and Classical Studies

Q. I understand you’re a fan of the Drew motto, “Freely have you received, freely give.”
A. When I first toured Drew as a prospective student, I noticed the motto painted on a chair in the admissions office. The words resonated with me; they embodied the privilege and responsibility of education. Those words, a feeling of “home” on Drew’s campus and its strong English program made me choose Drew.

Q. Has your experience in the English program proved as profound?
A. My English professors have changed the way I view everything. In the very first English class I had at Drew, my professor showed me how to examine things with a slant. Since that course, I can’t read anything without watching the narrator with distance and suspicion, which is essential to being both a close reader and writer.

Another professor helped me trust myself as a writer, and to see that I had something to write that others would want to read. Both professors were fantastic inside and outside the classroom and propelled very formative parts of my time at Drew. 

Q. What do you plan to do with all you’ve learned?
A. I want to help others expand their views of themselves and of the world around them—to make others fully see without popular sentiment and assumption blocking their lenses. 

Q. That’s lofty and exemplary! Has the English program helped prepare you for this aim?
A. Yes, I suppose it has. Thinking independently is one of the most cultivated aspects of the program. Learning to think for yourself—and think well—is crucial to reading and writing well.

Q. Between your life goal and your assessment of the English program, I believe you have a penchant for nonlinear thought. Do you agree?
A. I absolutely agree—and I’m actually working on an honors thesis about another nonlinear thinker: Virginia Woolf. I even taught a class on her novel To the Lighthouse. Woolf is a powerful writer, but you need to chase her thoughts to understand her writing. She’s clever and at times sarcastic, but that’s what makes her writing fun. 

Q. What does a scholar such as yourself do it your spare time, if any?
A. Ah, yes, “spare time”—that space left over after academics, extracurriculars and the essentials of eating, sleeping and bathing, for one to do as he or she pleases. I read, write, listen to music, have long conversations, walk and ride my bicycle—not necessarily in that order of precedence or preference. 

Q. Do I sense the ghost of the sarcastic Mrs. Woolf in that reply?
A. Well, I could have said I enjoyed long walks on the beach and writing the next Great American Novel, but we all would have known that was rubbish.