Q: How did your Slavic studies prepare you for your future career? What was the most important thing you learned?
A: Learning Russian was the most useful part of my U of T degree. It helped me get hired by the Canadian government and launched a lifelong engagement with the Slavic world. I ended up living most of the 1990s in Russia (first as a journalist, then as a CIDA officer at the Canadian embassy, and then running a CIDA project with Russian parliaments), and spent this past summer working in Kiev.
Q: What did you do immediately upon graduation?
A: I went to Moscow from summer 1991 through summer 1992, and found work as a journalist for an obscure Canadian business weekly called USSR Business Reports (later Russian Business Reports). We covered the putsch of August 1991, the final collapse of the Soviet Union, and the first, chaotic beginnings of independent Russia. I was paid $40 a month, which you could live on back then, plus a one-room apartment in a distant suburb. I loved it.
Q: What advice would you give to graduating students, or to students thinking about the Slavic program?
A: There's no substitute for living there. Take a year, pick your country, and find something random to do. Russia's a very different country these days, but there are plenty of other interesting options -- Poland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Serbia. Immerse yourself in the culture, absorb the language, enjoy yourself, and don't worry too much about what comes next.