Jennifer
Honours Specialization in English Language and Literature
Fourth Year
Hometown: Niagara Falls, Ontario
Extra-Curricular Involvement:
I’ve been a volunteer journalist at local non-profit media company LondonFuse for almost two years, where this past summer I was employed as their Heritage and Community Writer. This opportunity let me be neck deep in the London library archives and the city’s local culture and history everyday, and that was fantastic. My articles have been published on their website LondonFuse.ca, and in their monthly publication ShortFuse.
As well as Fuse, my articles have been published in the Western Gazette and Iconoclast’s 2018 Hyphen publication.
Currently I’m working on a film for Western’s upcoming 2019 Smartphone Film Festival. I wrote, am directing, and starring in the film, so it’s a real Tommy-Wiseau-esque passion project for me right now, and I’m excited to work on something that me and my amazing friends have put so much time into.
I write a lot of surrealist poems, and just recently have started sharing them in the Western’s creative channels. My poetry has been published in AHSC’s Spring 2017 and Fall 2018 editions of the student journal Symposium. Recently I placed first in the Coterie’s Fall 2018 poetry slam with a piece about the dangerous history of interstellar travel.
I love acting, and last year I acted in the Theatre Western’s student play festival Purple Shorts, where I played the Devil in the “The Plate Collector” production. This past year I had the pleasure of being part of English 2041F’s production of Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, where I played Venus.
Why did you choose Arts and Humanities at Western?
I originally started off in Physics, but I didn’t feel like I was getting the creative outlet I really desired in the core STEM courses. I took a couple Writing and English courses on a whim, one being the first-year course, The Art of Storytelling. In that class I really fell in love with, and recognized how much that I truly wanted to just throw myself into everything English literature. I remember reading Hemmingway’s “Hill’s like White Elephants” in that course and just being floored by how language and literature can be so elastic in form, and how every word can emit a kind of buzzing potential. I think that was the same day I transferred out of Physics.
What is one highlight of your Western experience so far?
This biggest highlight for me so far is simple – working with texts. One particular process that stands out for me is when I wrote an essay on the beautiful and incredibly complicated Afrofuturist poetry of Will Alexander. Half the time I was analyzing these poems I wasn’t even sure I really knew what was going on, but I knew the work was trying to tell me so many things that I just wasn’t getting. So I resolved to get to a point where I was at least familiar enough to grapple with the ideas I thought were there. For two months I sat down with this book and read it cover to cover as slowly as I could, googling every word, potential allusion, or poetic tool that I thought was significant. And yes, this entire period I was bathed in a mood of confusion; there were so many times I would order at a restaurant, and when the server asked how my day was going, I’d say “yes.” But it was all worth it because once in a while my persistence would pay off and I would feel like I was able to see what the poet was asking me to see, even if it was as small as understanding who the speaker was at a particular moment. And that’s valuable, and that’s gratifying, because understanding English literature is a process that’s never complete. The work you put into getting even a tiny bit of a text is like solving a riddle that is going to change its meaning the longer you look at it – it’s elating, it’s annoying, but it’s extraordinarily worthwhile when you put the work in.
What are your plans after graduation?
I’ve jokingly told people I’m going to try my hand at being a mountain sage, but I’m slowly realizing that statement does have a little truth. I’m not sure what I want to do after university, and right now I’m trying, like the Byronic hero, to be comfortable not completely knowing. I want to keep my options open for the future, be it a creative path or academic one, so I’m going to be taking a year off and applying for Law School in the fall and seeing where that takes me. I’m hoping at some point to live abroad in Scotland or Japan, with the broader goal of living in a vibrant and bustling city my whole life. But for right now I don’t know, and wherever I end up, I’m planning on taking my work ethic and chaotic and bizarre creative impulses with me.
What advice would you give to incoming Arts and Humanities students?
Watch Dead Poets Society at least twelve times before starting your first year. That movie will fill you with a much-needed zeal for connecting and creating something incredible with your peers. University is a hundred times more fun the more you take the space and the time and the resources that Western offers and use it to create projects and art that you’re passionate about. The friendships and connections I’ve made, as well as the confidence I’ve gained by putting myself and my art out there, despite not always succeeding, has been the cornerstone of what has made my university experience great. So if you ever stumble across an open mic, grab with both hands, and rant about whatever you want, because that fire is inspiring.
What is the best thing about your department?
I’m incredibly biased because I’m a student, but it’s the student events. The Coterie, the AHSC, and others, work so hard to put together really cool events and programming that brings Arts and Humanities students together. As frequenter of these, standing in the back loading free cheese and crackers into my Tupperware, I really enjoy seeing student arts come to life on a stage. I think it’s incredibly important to give a platform to student arts, as you really hear the student voice ring loud and ring true in these spaces. I’ve been floored by some of the songs and poetry I’ve heard coming out of these gatherings, and it’s stuff that really gets me thinking long after the piece ends. Plus, there’s free food usually. Did I already mention that? Because that’s very important.
