MSU English Alumni Stories

MSU English Alumni Stories

Sarah Asmus Quote

Thinking skills, not just communication skills, are highly valuable. English majors spend years eyebrows deep in information, learning new ways of thinking about and making connections between “things.” If you can write research papers and analyze poetry, you can understand the steps involved in creating a website. You can draw analogies that make sense to coworkers and clients who have no idea what the web dev team is talking about.

Sarah Asmus

Project Manager

Nathan Rester Quote

The professors were great, the classes were fun, and you’d be surprised how well fiction writing translate to legal writing – knowing what people respond to and why is a key tool in any drafting project, whether it’s a short story or an appellate brief. There’s no such thing as extraneous writing practice.

Nathan Rester

Associate Attorney

Lisa McMurtray Quote

Be open to opportunities that you may not have anticipated, and don’t feel tied to one career path—especially one that may feel chosen for you rather than by you. Try different career options and take internships if possible.

Lisa McMurtray

Associate Editor

Lily Gordon Quote

I am an Intelligence Analyst at one of the FBI’s 56 field offices. My job varies immensely day to day, but it centers around the things that attracted me to it in the first place – combing through a variety of sources and data, picking out important facts, and creating an assessment. I then work to efficiently present that assessment to those who can use it to make operational decisions. This can be in the form of presentations or briefings but is most often in the form of written intelligence products, similar to academic papers but with different structures and goals.

Lily Gordon

Intelligence Analyst

Leslie Joblin Quote

Before I ever commit a word to the page on an Elucidata document, I have an audience in mind. I need to know: What’s their familiarity with this topic? How will this document be used? Is this an internal-memo meant to inform, or a public-facing infographic that must incite unfamiliar readers to care about a topic? In my experience, English majors are much more nimble with this exercise, to the point where it becomes a largely intuitive practice. Because it comes so naturally, it’s easy to underestimate how rare and useful this skillset is in many industries.

Leslie Joblin

Co-owner and Writer at a data-consulting firm, Lifestyle Journalist

Lauren Shook Quote

The thing that has changed the most, though, is how I think of my teaching and writing as in service to the communities in which I live and was raised. I research food insecurity, especially as it affects college students. My Shakespeare course is a service-learning course focused on food, hunger, and poverty in Shakespeare’s time period, and my students and I work with a local community garden. As an extension of this work, I’m finishing up a book manuscript called A Place at Shakespeare’s Table, and I hope to send the book to publishers at the end of this year.

Lauren Shook

Assistant Professor of English, Interim Director of African American Studies

Kate Barber Quote

There was a group in Mike Kardos’s fiction class that went out to dinner at Zorba’s every Wednesday night after workshop. We had such a great group of writers and friends in that class, across both undergrad/grad levels, and I am still in touch with most of them. Those were some of my favorite nights!

Kate Barber

Communication Specialist

Eric Smith Quote

My plan upon enrolling in graduate studies at MSU was ultimately to pursue a doctoral degree and to obtain a tenure-track job as an English professor, and I have been very fortunate to achieve these goals. The instruction and encouragement that I received at MSU from faculty members like my first true scholarly mentor and dear friend, the late Richard F. Patteson, Rich Lyons, and Kelly Marsh ideally prepared me to take these next steps.

Eric Smith

Professor of English

Darby Freeman Quote

As an English major, I learned communication skills and how to be detail-oriented through writing many papers. I use both of these skills in my job. It is critical that our students understand our content, and in order for that to happen, the content of our scripts must be clearly communicated. Years of writing essays and learning how to clearly communicate an idea has been useful in this job.

Darby Freeman

Editor/Tech

Daniel Austin Quote

One of my favorite memories as an undergraduate was spending time with other undergrads discussing literature, something that continues to this day. Back then, our discussions were largely focused on exploring concepts our teachers and the articles we read were exposing to us. We would spend hours in Lee Hall, the Library, or in the Union discussing ideas we had about the literature we were reading.

Daniel Austin

Cyber Security Specialist

Courtney McCreary Quote

I do a lot of writing in my job. I write news releases, captions for social media posts, copy for ads and other publicity materials, respond to dozens of emails every day and I am constantly proofreading!

Courtney McCreary

Senior Publicity and Promotions Manager

Caroline Smith Quote

Practicing law – especially the areas in which I practice – can be very writing intensive. Along those lines, editing and composition are two skills that I use every day that were honed as an English major. The skill that has made the largest impact on my career, though, is analysis. I am not sure I appreciated the analytical skills I was developing as I was writing a paper in Chaucer would transfer into the skills needed to evaluate whether a federal court has jurisdiction to hear a lawsuit filed against my client, but I know that my background as an English major established that foundation.

Caroline Smith

Attorney