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My name is Cory Patato.
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I graduated from Suffolk University May 2014.
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I was an English major and I'm currently working
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in the department as a teaching assistant.
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I worked on Dickens' final novel,
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The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
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which was unfinished at the time of his death.
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So I went through this mystery novel without an ending,
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and I looked for clues that Dickens peppered
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in throughout the book so that I could solve the mystery
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that he was unable to finish.
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It was a great experience
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and it's prepared me for my future.
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It's prepared me to be a TA in the sense that I have a
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unique ability to help any
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of the other students working on their thesis now.
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And it's helped me to prepare for my graduate school.
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I intend to go for my PhD and this is just a stepping stone
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on the way to writing a dissertation
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- My name's Jason Kleckner.
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I'm a junior here at Suffolk University.
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I am an English major
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with a concentration in Creative Writing.
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So the real beauty of the honors seminar
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is just how challenging and intensive the work is.
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We're really doing a very close reading of the material,
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and there's a real intimacy
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between myself and the other students
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and myself and the professor.
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And because it's such a small class,
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there's a lot of opportunity
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to work with the other students in our reading,
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ask questions to the professor and get his feedback.
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And in a way, it's really on par
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with a graduate school class
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because it is so intensely focused
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on a very specific author and body of work.
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- My name is Kate Hellman, I am a senior at Suffolk.
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During my time at Suffolk, I've taken a number
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of interesting literature courses, as well.
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I took a honors seminar on the Beat Generation.
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I took a class all about utopias and dystopias,
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which covered everything from "Walden"
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through "The Hunger Games."
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I have taken classes on post-colonialism and decadence.
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And all of these classes really help understand,
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help further my understanding of literature,
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which I think helps me improve as a writer.
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And going through a semester
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where I'm taking a certain number of literature courses
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and then some that are more focused on writing,
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they really do work together to help me improve the essays
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that I'm turning in for my literature courses,
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as well as the literary nature
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of my own personal creative writing.
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- So we have an English Major club.
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It's kind of like a writing and literature society on campus
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called the Intertextuals.
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I'm the president this year.
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And basically our main goal is to connect English majors
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with each other.
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And we do that through weekly meetings
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where we'll have discussions about what we're reading,
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what we're writing, or even just what we're interested in.
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And I think it's a really great way
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of allowing students to connect
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over how literature is relevant to them
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and to the world today.
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And then we'll have other events and things like that.
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So sometimes we'll hold a book club
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where we read a work that the society chooses
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and we'll discuss it,
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and we can share our passion about books
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and literature that way.
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And then we'll have other events
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for people who are interested in creative writing.
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We'll have student readings in the Poetry Center
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where professional authors actually hold readings as well.
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And students can read works of poetry,
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creative nonfiction and short fiction that they've created.
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- So, I've been able to take a really wide variety
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of classes during my Suffolk experience.
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Some of my favorites were definitely
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my freshmen seminar, Monsters and Nightmares,
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and then I was also able to take Ancient Rome,
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and I've taken,
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probably my favorite class was Literary Theory,
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because I'm also really interested in philosophy.
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So, I was able to take a class that was pretty much
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the philosophy of literature.
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And then we have a lot of classes that catered
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to various subject matters that you might be interested in,
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like I'm really into women and gender studies,
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and I was able to take a class,
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Henry, Alice, and William James,
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on the James family and Alice James,
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who most people don't talk about,
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one of the siblings to Henry James, the famous novelist.
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So, I've had a really cool and diverse experience
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when it's comes to the classes at Suffolk.
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I don't know.
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What about you, Cory?
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- I've taken a wide variety of classes,
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everything from medieval literature,
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straight through to things about utopian dystopian lit,
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that was my honors seminar,
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where we studied everything from Plato's "Republic"
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straight through to less known sci-fi works
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like Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed".
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I've taken all different types of classes,
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and as a teaching assistant,
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I took this as an opportunity to learn more,
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take classes that I didn't have a chance to take
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while I was at Suffolk,
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so I'm working closer with professors in that sense, too.
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- I would say a question I get a lot
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as an English major is like, is just,
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oh what are you gonna do with your English major?
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Why did you choose that?
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You know.
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And I think that as I've been here at Suffolk
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and I've talked to my professors
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and I've kind of grown as a student
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and as a reader and kind of as an adult even,
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I've realized that there's really just a bunch that
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or a lot that you can do with an English major.
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- Yeah.
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I would agree.
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I think that it's made me feel confident
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in entering a lot of different areas of adult life.
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I feel prepared for a career.
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I feel prepared to kind of embark
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on furthering my education.
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And I also feel like a very conscious interactor
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with the world around me
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because so much of the information
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that's being thrown at us all the time
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requires us to interpret it.
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I just think it's a really enriching field of study.
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- Hi, my name is Robert.
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I'm an English major here at Suffolk University.
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I'm a junior.
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So I chose Suffolk University
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because it's a, it was a smaller school
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compared to my other options.
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And I thought that here I would have more interaction
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with my professors.
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The smaller classes would make me a more valuable student
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to the university.
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And that's really been true throughout my experience.
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A lot of the classes I've taken
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I've gotten to talk one-on-one with the professors.
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I would say usually within the first week, or, you know
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sometimes within the first day the professors know my name
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and I know their name.
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And I would say that just the small class sizes
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allow for a lot of exchange of ideas,
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a lot of interaction between the students themselves
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and their professors on a professorial level
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but also on an equal level a lot of the times.
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- Hi, my name is Robert.
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I'm an English major here at Suffolk University.
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I'm a junior.
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So every, every semester when I go to
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when I go to choose my classes,
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I usually go up either to the department open house,
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or to talk with my professors
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about what they're teaching the next semester.
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And there's always a really interesting, you know,
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amalgamation of different classes
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from really classic, you know,
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mid 20th century American fiction, to stuff more like the,
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the literature of the Iraq and Vietnam conflict.
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We have classes, I've taken classes
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on the grotesque and the Gothic.
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I've taken classes on Irish literature,
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American short stories.
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One class I'm taking right now is all on the,
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the middle of, the middle of the 20th century in America.
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I've taken classes on Virgil's Aeneid.
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I've taken classes on just like, on just really
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anything that the professors are interested in teaching.