I am a lawyer and yoga instructor in Abbotsford, B.C. I graduated from UFV with my Bachelor of Arts in English in 2006.
I sort of fell into studying English at UFV. I spent my first year studying sciences and then went away to France for a year to work as an au pair. When I returned to UFV, I knew I didn’t want to study sciences anymore, but wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to head in.
I decided to look through the course catalogue and just pick the classes that most appealed to me. It didn’t take long to realize that I wanted to study literature — and UFV was a great place to do it. It was wonderful to study at a school with small class sizes, where it was possible to build relationships with professors.
When I went on to law school at the University of Victoria, I found the skills I had developed during my time studying English at UFV to be a tremendous benefit. As it turns out, analyzing legislation is not so different from analyzing poetry.
The close-reading skills I acquired through my English studies translated easily to reading legislation and case law. In addition, the strong writing skills I developed with the assistance of my professors in the UFV English department gave me an advantage in law school and that has certainly carried through to my career as a lawyer.