Meet Alum Davita DesRoches MDIV ’21

Hometown: Wolfville, Nova Scotia

Major/Minor/Graduation Year: BSc with Honours in Math & Statistics and English (Acadia University, ’16); MA in English (McGill University, ’18), MDIV (Wake Forest University, ’21)

Current Employment: Alternative Media Specialist, Center for Learning, Access, and Student Success, Wake Forest University

What role has the English major played in your career path? In my current role as Alternative Media Specialist, I support students at Wake Forest with print-based disabilities to provide them with accessible reading materials. After six years of studying English at the undergraduate and graduate levels, my training to analyze texts and the act of reading now supports me as I pivot to a practical and technical way of facilitating reading. It means that in addition to providing access, I am also always curious about how the various ways that students with disabilities interact with texts and information shift the experience of reading and change how information is absorbed and synthesized. It has made me examine my own practices of reading, particularly challenging my own ableist attitudes about reading. Being an English major taught me to embrace and explore new ways of thinking, and that dexterity continues to serve me well. Studying English also taught me the power of collaboration. Research as an English student can feel like an independent and sometimes isolating activity, and I learned to lean on my peers in my department and in other departments to share ideas and to enliven my own thinking. My current role requires a similar balance of independent work and dynamic collaboration, and studying English taught me to stay open and curious about how others’ ideas and perspectives can offer a new way forward in my own work.