Biography
Heather Taylor had a lot to think about when she decided to pursue a graduate degree. She needed to make sure that the university she decided to attend wouldn’t take away from her ability to work full-time. She wanted to pursue a major that would work with her interest in the cognitive sciences, and yet was close enough to home to ensure she could still spend time with her daughter. Heather states, “EMU offered all of its graduate courses in the evening, which worked perfectly into my schedule and allowed me to keep working and be available for my daughter.”
Taylor took her first linguistics class as a non-degree graduate student in order to determine whether this was the right field for her. She states, “By taking this course [LING 401], I was able to gain an understanding of what the discipline entailed and decide[d] to apply to the Master’s program.” For her, linguistics meshed well with her undergraduate interests in psychology and neuroscience.
Taylor notes that the unique environment in the Linguistics program created “a balance between the emphasis on undergraduate and graduate studies. The program as a whole felt like a well-integrated system where I as a graduate student could interact with my faculty, my fellow graduate student, and the undergraduates in a way that fostered learning, collaboration, nurturing, and a refining of ideas.”
Heather advises undergraduate students considering pursuing Linguistics to get as diverse a training as possible because posted positions are looking for applicants with an interdisciplinary background. For graduates, Heather states, “Choose a specialization within the field they love to pursue, and to find a graduate program where there are faculty who also love to pursue this field. Linguistics is hard work, and you need to be in a place and working with people that remind you why you chose the field in the first place.”
Taylor is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Maryland-College Park with future plans of working in academia.
-- Venus Gregory
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