Student Accomplishments
Grads honored for achievement 2003
Seven new Sac State alumni, one from each of the University's Colleges, received the Outstanding Senior Award at the annual Honors Convocation in the spring.
Sherlyn A. Reafsnyder, an English major, was honored for her participation in the student research competition, her extracurricular service as a foster parent for 27 years and for raising seven foster children last fall while earning A's in all her academic work. Biological sciences student Singh was recognized for feeding the homeless, working with mentally disabled patients, serving as an emergency room volunteer and tutoring high school students
Fall 2002 l Capital University Journal
Capital Arts - The Next Generation
story by Laurie Hall
photos by Sherry Mark
Ben Waller
Reading Into Things
Sometimes, mother knows best. When Ben Waller was trying to decide what he wanted to do as a career, he followed the lead of his mom–a student in Sac State's English department–and enrolled in the department's graduate program.
And it was there he learned that he definitely wants to be a literature professor.
As a kid, Waller never expected to be on this path. “I hated reading and I hated school until the end of high school,” he says. “Then I discovered something. I started taking an English class and I saw I could do this. It's fun.”
He says he now feels his choice of career is more meaningful because it survived the years when he wanted nothing to do with school. “No one suggested I should teach,” he says. “I realized it on my own.”
Waller's primary focus is English literature, looking at criticism theory on a broad range of topics. “I analyze literature in terms of approach,” he says. “I'm exploring all the ways literature can have meaning and impact for people. There are many different ways to look at it.
“Studying literature is like studying life. It's one of the most important things you can do in educating people.”
After earning his bachelor's degree elsewhere, Waller is thrilled by his choice of graduate school. “My department is superb,” he says. “They know how to present concepts and inspire students to want to do the same.”
The faculty has also sparked his interest in studying mythology, which led him to look for examples of the mythological approach in other types of literature. “I like the really old and really new mythology as well as medieval Old English and Middle English,” he says. He also studies recent works on the ramifications of modern theories of criticism.
While he finishes his degree, he's paying his way with either the dream job–or expensive temptation–for a literature buff. He works at a bookstore. “It's terrible,” he says. “I see so many things I want.”
