Q: How did your Slavic studies prepare you for your future career? What was the most important thing you learned?
A: The language skills helped me connect with Russian speaking people that I encountered in various jobs I had which was a great boost to my interpersonal skills. It also helped me recently when conducting an in-depth research interview with an individual from Russia who did not speak English very well. We were able to schedule the interview on account of my being able to speak to her in Russian and during the interview I was able to help her by translating the odd word or expression here and there that she did not know in English without leading her in any way. As a result we obtained a valuable qualitative research interview that we would have not been able to do my ability to connect with people in a professional setting. Another way it helped me was in cultivating my analytical abilities had we not had a Russian speaking researcher on the project. So the singular takeaway is that it enhanced my interpersonal skills not only in terms of having to analyze how a writer writes but also in terms of analyzing human behaviour. I recall how one of my professors Dr. N. Schneidman showed us how studying great works of literature helps develop our psychological astuteness in being able to analyze people and pointed out how he had contributed chapters to 2 books on psychology without having a formal degree in this discipline based on his expertise in the study of literature. This is a lesson I've taken into my professional life and has helped me a great deal. .
Q: How did your Slavic studies contribute more generally to your life?
A: One could say it contributed more generally to my personal development by enabling me to communicate with distant family members in Russia that I would never have been able to converse or correspond with had I not studied the language. It also gave me richer insight into the cultural psychology of the Russian people and more recently able to understand at a deeper level the current crisis in eastern Ukraine.
Q: What did you do immediately upon graduation?
A: Worked in academic administration at Victoria College (as admin. assistant in Registrar's Office). Immediately following became associate registrar at Ontario College of Art. Following that became financial advisor then financial and business journalist and research consultant. Currently self employed as freelance writer editor and researcher under my own firm Ecostrat Communications (www.ecostratcommunications.ca) and also Senior Writer and Senior Researcher for Decision Partners an international team of scientists engineers and management professionals specializing in advanced behaviour decision research to inform decision making and human behaviour. A complicated way of saying we do qualitative research to find out about people's interests concerns and communication needs about some complex issue (i.e. vaccine safety food terrrorism flood risk management etc.) and use that insight to inform communications strategies and materials that address these.
Q: What advice would you give to graduating students, or to students thinking about the Slavic program?
A: Learn as much vocabulary as you can - not just the literary vocabulary you get in school - but also business and financial terms. If I were to do my degrees again I would have taken some business electives. Expose yourself to as much Russian (or Polish or Czech or whatever language you're studying) get used to hearing it learn the idioms and get as much into your brain as you can. Also study the culture music politics geography.