Lakehead University Inquiry to Life after Lakehead..

I received an interesting email from Lakehead's English department the other day!

"The department of English at Lakehead University is reviewing its programs, and we want your input! Our English alumni are important to us, and we’d love to hear about what you’re up to now. We’d be so grateful if you would be willing to share your thoughts on your time at Lakehead. What did you enjoy most about your English degree?  How did it prepare you for your career? How did you present the skill set you obtained in your degree in looking for work?"

I want to take a moment and respond to this question with the thanks and gratitude that I feel towards Lakehaed University. I spent five years at Lakehead. Unfortunately there were a small number of courses I was apart of that were not exactly, my areas of interest. But for each, there were many more that made it well worth the time to take the courses I did not fully comprehend, I started in a double Major of philosophy and English Language Arts. The beginning of university, end of high school I thought that my strengths were in both literature studies and Philosophy.After quickly realizing the greater interest level in English Studies and Literature, I pursued that as an individual major. 

I think about the experiences in class and lessons learned directly and indirectly through course materials and assignments. I found that the most integral part of the positive experience in this major was the faculty. I had professors who were interesting, accommodating and very reasonable. The experience to succeed was always an open invitation, the professors were not out to ruin anyone's academic career and were all in all, just good people. To really make it special, they were good people with amazing ideas. There are a number of professors in the English department that I'd name personally, however at this point from what I know and understand, most have moved on or moved elsewhere. I don't any or many of them are still at Lakehead or in the English department. Teaching has been my chosen career path and the English Department has done more than prepare me for my career. 

Lakehead yet continues to be an important part of my life as I strive for additional qualifications as a teacher, not only in English, but other subjects as well now. The English department is something of beauty and to be honest, I can remember one of the proudest moments in my life because of the English Student Association (basically department student representatives). I applied to have a poem (one dedicated to a friend of mine who was in an abusive relationship), published in The Artery, to my surprise-it was accepted. I was overwhelmed with joy.