Senior Spotlight: Lauren Spencer

Lauren Spencer is an English major and rhetoric minor who will be an operations analyst for Morgan Stanley.

How did you decide to be an English major?

I first came into the University of Maryland as a business major, but I wasn’t clicking with the class material on a deeper level. I wanted to be a corporate lawyer, and I knew lawyers often start in English, so in the spring, I took a few English classes with a couple of different professors. I just loved the classes and I loved the material that we were learning. Then I picked up the rhetoric minor too, to learn more about the rhetoric side. It’s been great. I love the English Department here. All of the professors really care about us, and I’ve been able to forge some really meaningful relationships with a lot of them.

What was your favorite class during your time here?

That was ENGL 308B: “Shakespeare and Black America” with Professor Coles. That was the course that opened my eyes to the fact that older literature can be applied to everyday societal issues, and I was able to see the breadth of what an English degree can do. It was one of those classes where my curiosity was cultivated and I was able to really push myself. Professor Coles ended up being one of my advisors for my honors thesis dissertation.

Tell us more about your experience in the honors program.

In addition to Professor Coles, I also worked with Professor Nelson and Professor Brooks. I took classes with them during my sophomore, junior and senior years, and I was able to bring all three of those classes and professors together for my final dissertation. It was a full circle moment, and they have been very meaningful in my entire college experience, in and out of the classroom.

What was your honors dissertation about?

I was writing about “Utopia,” which was written in the early modern period by Thomas More, who coined the term utopia. Essentially, I recontextualized what was going on in the fictional world that he was creating with the actual environmental conditions that were happening at the time he was writing, using an ecocritical lens. It was interdisciplinary in the sense that I was using both science and English and to argue that More was a pioneer of sustainability rhetoric. So it was really cool; it was really different.

What are the main skills you’ve learned from the English major that you’ll bring into your career?

The biggest aspects are analytical thinking and advanced communication skills. I think being analytical in the business world from a humanities perspective is really helpful. I also gained great interpersonal and leadership skills, especially in the honors program. I learned how to be curious, how to take criticism and how to be persuasive while doing so in a respectful manner.