Kim Adams
literature

Chris Bass
English Ed & French

Regan Bledsaw
writing

Molly Burns
English Education

Amberly Carter
writing

Cole Coers
English Education

Deanne Drechsler
English Education

Tony Gill
literature

Katie Hammond
English Education

Aaron Ottis
writing

Maureen Ritter
English Education

Jenna Roberts
writing

Heather Saxon
writing

Emily Skaja
writing & literature

Julie Trueblood
writing & literature

Jenn Van Natta
writing & literature

Kelly Walsh
English Education

Joanne Weise
writing

Josh Wild
writing & literature

Shawna Vaugn
writing & Spanish

Lindseay Yanchus
writing & comm.

Kelley Rowe
theatre & writing

(no photo)

Abbie Weber
literature

Kim Adams

Bio: I love twentieth century literature in particular and the world of academia in general. However, my biggest passion is for bringing my love for academic literature into the discipline of theology. I intend to use what I have learned as an English major at Millikin to pursue graduate work in Biblical/Christian studies.

What are your plans for the next year and the future? I'm taking a year off before heading to grad school.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin? Being surrounded by people [at least] as nerdy as I am. :o)

Who are your favorite authors? Edgar Allen Poe, J.I. Packer, Hannah Hurnard, Allen Wakabayashi, C.S. Lewis

What do you like to write? I love journaling — basically reflection/contemplation writing. Another budding interest is memoir-writing, which I will hopefully be pursuing in the near future.

What is your advice for future English majors? Learn everything you can in the short time you have as an undergrad. You may find truth and wisdom in unlikely places.

Chris Bass

Bio: I am a French and English education major at Millikin. I have been able to study in Paris and Montpellier, France as well as New Delhi and Calcutta, India. I won the Conant writing award in 2006. I swam four years on the Millikin varsity swim team. I am also a member of Sigma Tau Delta (honorary English fraternity). I like to teach and travel.

What are your plans for the next year and the future? In the fall, I will be student teaching in Chicago with the Urban Life Center. After my December graduation, I would like to teach English somewhere in the world. Graduate school is also on my list.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin?
My favorite events of senior year: Poe in the cemetery, participating at the Illinois Philological Association (IPA) conference with peers and faculty, being a teaching assistant for Prof. Crowe’s IN150 (minus the 8am starting time), and my senior seminar with the 7 English Ed. Folk and Dr. O.

Who are your favorite authors?
Well, I can say that Toni Morrison was my first favorite author.

What do you like to write?
A good term paper can be fun- Otherwise, I journal.

What is your advice for future English majors?
Appreciate and participate in all that the department has to offer. The department is filled with the best office assistant, tarot card reader, and Mountain Dew drinkers on campus. Meet with professors outside of class. Allow yourself to be mentored by a faculty member. Millikin’s English department represents what a small university strives to be.

Molly Burns
English Education

Molly Burns

Bio: I’ve known I wanted to major in English since my senior year of high school – I had a really amazing teacher who inspired me, and made me want to run a classroom just like hers one day. Obviously I love to read, and I’m a complete nerd when it comes to musical theatre.

What are your plans for the next year and the future? Right now, I’m about 90% certain that I’m going to go to St. Louis University in the fall to get my Master’s degree; my ultimate goal has always been to teach at the college level.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin? I loved the atmosphere of the department in general – all of the professors were incredibly approachable, and never minded that I frequently bombarded them with emails! I also loved having the chance to work as a teaching assistant during my senior year; not many undergrad students have that opportunity. Having millions of classes with my fellow English Education majors during senior year was also pretty fantastic – they’re definitely some of the people I will miss the most.

Who are your favorite authors? I love Margaret Atwood, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the Harry Potter books

What do you like to write? I do a lot of journaling, and though I haven’t written a haiku since I took Dr. Brooks’s class, I enjoyed writing those as well!

What is your advice for future English majors? Keep up with your reading! Particularly in Dr. Mihm’s classes – he has a knack for knowing when you haven’t!

Cole Coers

I'm a small town girl who loves reading, scrapbooking, and cross-stitching.

What are your plans for the next year and the future? I'll be teaching at a small school, probably high school.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin? My best English classes were International Fiction with Dr. Mihm and Contemplation Writing with Dr. Braniger. I learned so much in each of them and was able to improve not only my reading/ writing skills but also become a better person.

Who are your favorite authors? Tim O'Brien, Douglas Adams

What do you like to write? I'm not a writer. But I do write comtemplative-type stuff.

What is your advice for future English majors? Well, this is my advice for anyone of any major- Find successful upperclassmen in your major and figure out what they're doing right.

Deanne Drechsler
English Education
Oak Lawn, IL

Deanne Drechsler

Bio: I have a few opinions, in addition to a never-ending stream of questions and some OCD tendencies. I like tea, coffee, English-loving people, traveling, volunteering, thinking, and people-watching.

What are your plans for the next year and the future? Well, this summer I'm going to hike the Grand Canyon, and then I'll be headed to Australia. After that, my future plans include helping people, learning as much as I can, traveling, if I'm not too broke, and grad school, again, if I'm not too broke.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin? My favorite class at Millikin was Contemplation Writing with Dr. Carmella Braniger, a life-altering course if you allow it to be. Applied Writing Theory with Dr. DeJoy and International Fiction with Dr. Mihm were up there though.

English activities: Collage - Do it. The Writing Center - Do it. Sigma Tau Delta - Do it.

Who are your favorite authors? "V" Woolf and William Faulkner -- But I must admit that I've grown to like the English Romantics, and Vincent Van Gogh wrote some really kickin' letters.

What do you like to write? Anything, I suppose. I just finished a script for at one-act play, and writing that was a blast. I find self-writing particularly valuable.

What is your advice for future English majors? Read. Think. Write. Think. Ask questions. Think. Oh yeah, and be sure to appreciate your professors. They like to think too.

Katie Hammond

Bio: I was born and raised in Wheaton, IL, I'm an eternal optimist (to a fault), I like bookstores that have no organizational scheme, and I'm interested in far too many things for my own good.

What are your plans for the next year and the future? After graduation, I'll teach at Clare Woods Academy, a special education school in the Chicago suburbs, and then teach high school English. I'll also be getting married in the summer of 2007. In addition to teaching, I'll be taking graduate courses and hope to (eventually) receive a Ph.D in English Literature. Ultimately, I hope to teach at the college level.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin? Of all the courses I have taken at Millikin, I truly feel that the English professors are the hardest working and the most dedicated to the profession. I have learned so much from them and genuinely enjoyed attending each class. Furthermore, English students are also unlike any others at Millikin and class discussions generally extend beyond the classroom and into our personal lives.

Who are your favorite authors? Milan Kundera, Harold Pinter, William Shakespeare, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dean Young, e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath, Li-Young Lee, Italo Calvino, Pablo Neruda.... I'll stop. Eclectic, I know.

What do you like to write? I generally prefer literary analysis and rhetorical analysis over more creative works, though I do dabble in poetry.

What is your advice for future English majors? Get involved in the English department beyond the courses you take. Join Collage, write for the Decaturian, join Sigma Tau Delta, tutor at the Writing Center, etc. The extreme satisfaction I've found within the department stems from getting involved. In doing this, you will develop deeper relationships with not only your peers, but with English professors, as well.

Joanne Weise

Bio: I am your worst nightmare. (Just kidding, I gave that up years ago.) In all seriousness, I am a very carefree person who enjoys the simpler things in life: writing journals and haiku, watching trash TV with my cat, and doing generally geeky things with my two brothers and closest friends. I chose English writing because I love structure, words, grammar, and teaching people the differences between "to," "too," and "two."

What are your plans for the next year and the future?
This coming year (and hopefully for a long time to come) I will be working at Home Sight, Inc. here in Decatur as a Virtual Tour Processor. That means that I get to use ready-made Photoshop and InDesign templates to import pictures and 360-degree tours of houses into floor plans before sticking them on the web. Not only do I get to use my professional writing skills, but I get to look into lots of peoples' houses! Awesome. I have a feeling that I'm going to love this job.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin?
I can't say enough about the English program! English at Millikin is a great program with a wonderful set of faculty. Every professor is very flexible and willing to meet with students at any time about anything, whether it be class-related or otherwise. The duality of the literature and writing classes helped me to also pursue a history minor and made me a more active reader, listener, and participant in all of my other classes. I felt like I belonged to a group of equals among my peers, who were as knowledgeable and excited about learning as I was. Also, every professor gave me the impression that they knew what they were talking about and teaching us, which made me respect them even more.

Who are your favorite authors?
Emily Dickenson, Edgar Allan Poe, Willa Cather, Kurt Vonnegut, Nancy DeJoy, the English grads of '06

What do you like to write?
I love haiku very much, though I'll admit that I haven't written any in a long time. Otherwise, I love to write nonfiction/biographical pieces, as well as in my journal(s). Most recently, I'm really digging shopping lists and rent checks.

What is your advice for future English majors?
1. Talk in class! Chances are, if you're having difficulty getting through the text, everyone else is too.
2. NEVER start a paper the night before it's due, though I'm being a big hypocrite for saying so. ; ) (Leave two nights for Mihm and George papers.)
3. Try everything, even if you think you won't like it. I thought I'd have to suffer through a few classes, like American Lit through Twain and Contemplative Writing, but these quickly became my favorites.
4. It's OK not to like (OK, hate) literature, drama, etc. pre-1750. I do.
5. Have fun!

Maureen Ritter

Bio: I decided to come to Millikin after visiting a campus rep my senior year of high school, but I only met with him in order to get out of a history test I hadn't studied for. Four years later, I'm one student-teaching placement away from becoming a teacher myself, and even though I still bombed the make-up history test I took a few days later, things worked out in the long run. I like to travel, get lost in bookstores, and spend time with the kids in my life.

What are your plans for the next year and the future? After I finish student teaching in Chicago Public Schools, I plan on becoming a high school English teacher. I am also the full-time assistant coach of a high school speech team during the school year, which I will continue with. Ideally, my future will combine my dual loves of teaching English and discovering new cultures, hopefully by joining the Peace Corps' teaching program and spending a few years in Asia. At this point, who knows if continued graduate studies are in my future...I'd like to let life be my classroom for a while.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin? I thoroughly enjoyed all of my contact with the English professors. Working closely on research or teaching assistanceships helped me develop professional, academic relationships with faculty members, but at the same time the closeness of the department allows you to cultivate personal relationships as well. The professors have served as wonderful models for the kind of educator I want to be. The courses I took at the beginning of senior year, specifically International Fiction with Dr. Mihm and the internship in a CWRR classroom with Dr. Matthews/Dr. O'Conner, had an impact on me that I can't articulate here....all I can do is say thank you.

Who are your favorite authors? Isabel Allende, Alex Kotlowitz, Chuck Palahniuk, Toni Morrison, Erik Larson, Salman Rushdie.

What do you like to write? Sometimes I enjoy writing creative works, but not with enough consistency or frequency to be considered a "creative writer." I enjoy the kind of literary analysis that makes you feel like you've contributed something new and meaningful instead of parroting back what everyone else in the "Burkean Parlor" has said (hah!)

What is your advice for future English majors? Don't underestimate yourself. You are probably very capable, and you should go out on a limb and take some chances. Take a course that seems daunting, approach a professor if you have a passionate curiosity about something, speak up in class and voice your opinion even if you don't feel "as smart" as someone else in the room. And if you give them a chance, your fellow English majors will probably be some of the most amazing, intelligent, beautifully inspiring people you will ever meet - I know I've found this to be true.

Josh Wild

Bio: Hi. My name is Josh Wild and I'm about to graduate with a double degree in English-Literature and English-Writing. I grew up in various parts of the Paxton-Buckley-Loda school district in Central Illinois. During my time at Millikin, I fraternized with the beatific people. We rambled hopeful romantic nonsense until the birds jabbered, pacing back and forth on that stone thing behind Mills. We disavow ever holding seances in the Old Gym, turning to each other and realizing we were the only ghosts in there. We were all in love with each other, and to be young was very heaven. Still, here comes history to photograph us. But it's ok, because nobody ever condemned blowing the seeds off a dandelion.

What are your plans for the next year and the future? In the fall I will be teaching English to high school students in T'ai-chung, Taiwan. The following year I'll hopefully return to the States to attend grad school. I'm still trying to decide between an MFA and an MA, and that's the sole reason I'm taking a year off.

What did you like best about English studies at Millikin (favorite English classes or English activities)? The English faculty at Millikin are absolutely fantastic, and I wouldn't trade my academic experience at Millikin for anything. Still, I think the best thing for me was the student community here, the literary community that developed. There was nothing more instrumental in my development as a writer than my friendship with people like Katie Schmid and Emily Skaja. Those are just two names, but they represent perfectly the intelligence, generosity, and inspiration I discovered in so many of my peers. I studied with some very capable and talented people, and I feel blessed.

Who are your favorite authors? T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Friedrich Nietzsche, Douglas Adams, Jacques Derrida, William Shakespeare, Dante

What do you like to write? I like creative writing. I write poetry, short stories, and the occasional haiku. I realized this year that I like (and always have liked) writing nonsensical little notes in journals. I don't keep a real journal; I just write lists of individual words from my thoughts down. The imposed narrative of the traditional journal slows me down too much, like a construction zone on the interstate.

What is your advice for future English majors? Don't worry about your four years going by too fast. College flows quickly, and before you know it people are asking you to fill out senior surveys. Remember that most seniors have only been here a few years more than you have. So from the very beginning, feel entitled. I know a sophmore who's about to assume editorship of at least two magazines here on campus. Do more than you think you can. Make people cringe when they hear your schedule. And if you're a creative writer: read volumes 33-36 of Collage, and then put us to shame.