Business/Administration

Amy Glezen Simpson

Self-Employed Business Owner

Grad Year: 1993

 

Value to my career

Let’s bottom line it:  I became an English major to read.  The idea of reading away my Sunday afternoons in preparation for Monday’s lecture was too delicious to contemplate.  Discussing Dorothea’s marriage in Middlemarch?  A literary gossip session financed by the parents.  I’ll bring the cookies, you bring the nail-polish and we’ll have it all sorted out!  But a funny thing happened on the way to the novel – literature became …. difficult.  Painful.  Eye-opening.  Multi-layered.  Like the dimensions life inexplicably and suddenly took in college.  The world seemed to finally reveal itself and it wasn’t all happiness and light.  Conveying emotions, motivations, perceptions in both class discussions and in written essays was incredibly challenging.  It took significant energy to parse the intricate feelings evoked by what we were reading and analyzing in class.  But formidable ideas became easier, with time and practice, to comprehend and to effectively articulate.  As I now find myself in a self-employed business setting, in the time of emails and web-based conference calls, I realize that relationships with the client are almost completely established and cemented with the faceless word.  I believe I have a distinct advantage with the skills I gained in the English curriculum – I can successfully communicate, strategize, and persuade the business peer and, more importantly, the client in a way that directly benefits my company and, by extension, me!

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