The English Aggie

[Note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity] Teaching is one of the most popular career choices for English students after they graduate from Texas A&M. According to Texas A&M’s Career Center, 37% of English students who graduated in 2018 or 2019 became a teacher or a professor after graduating. We talked with Aleyda Solis-Cano, a former student and current English teacher at Cypress Ridge High School in CFISD. Solis completed her undergraduate degree in English and also got her Master of Education degree from Texas A&M and has been teaching for five and a half years. Q: Did you always want to be a teacher? A: Yes and no. I recently found a letter to myself that I did in elementary school—I don’t know what class it was for or when I wrote it specifically—but we had to write about where we saw ourselves in 10 years. I wrote that I was going to be a teacher. It was something that I wanted to do at an early age, and I feel like I changed, but then I went back ...

  For Fernando Rodriguez ‘16, an English degree prepared him for a wide range of career paths since graduating. He spoke with us about how current students can leverage their own English skills to transition into any industry and not be limited to a single path. Fernando Rodriguez ‘16 knows a thing or two about thinking quick on your feet and making the best of your situation. Since graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English, Rodriguez has experienced multiple different career fields, including education, freelance editing, and web design. Currently, he works as a Program Manager at Amazon where he uses his writing skills on a regular basis in a seemingly unconventional industry. Originally from Laredo, Texas, Rodriguez was a member of the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M, and played baritone and tuba for the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band. He majored in English with a focus in rhetoric and creative writing, and worked at the University Writing Center. Speaking about his experiences...

Savanna Polasek ‘18 discusses her journey to becoming a Marketing and Communications Specialist, Freelance Writer, and Entrepreneur after graduating with an English degree from Texas A&M.  One statewide non-profit, 81 program locations, 9 different social media accounts, and a memoir-writing business on the side—all components that make up the daily life of Savanna Polasek, a former English student who graduated from Texas A&M in 2018. In her current role as a Marketing and Communications Specialist at Upbring, a nonprofit dedicated to breaking the cycle of child abuse in Texas, Polasek gets to do what she’s always wanted to do: write. “I knew that there were stories as a very little kid, and I loved them. Then, I found out that somebody was writing the stories, and then, I wanted to be a writer,” Polasek said. To pursue her dream, Polasek completed the creative writing track during her time as an English major at Texas A&M. She said the coursework she took trained her ...

Former Aggie Marissa Madsen, Class of ‘13, talks about her career as a Senior Medical Editor in Houston, Texas, and how the Professional Writing Certificate got her to where she is today. Sitting with her three 15-pound furry “coworkers,” Floki, Odin and Juniper, Marissa Madsen prepares for her workday and pulls up her latest project. As a Senior Medical Editor at Syneos Health in Houston, Texas, Madsen is used to fast-paced, high energy days where she edits and reviews multiple documents. As a Class of ‘13 Aggie, the former English major and Professional Writing Certificate recipient regularly uses the skills she learned during her time at Texas A&M in her job today. At the beginning of her career, Madsen started working as an unpaid editorial intern for a nonprofit organization with two academic journals. She soon became Editorial Coordinator of those two journals after being promoted to a full-time position. She eventually moved to a different academic publication in Texas A...

Dr. Christian Bancroft, Class of ‘09 (they/them), talks about the publishing process and the journey they took to become a published author. Complex, enigmatic, byzantine—all words used to describe the publication process. From the outside, it is hard to understand, and on the inside, it can be daunting to navigate. Dr. Christian Bancroft, a former Texas A&M English major who graduated in 2009, successfully undertook the challenge and published their first book, Queering Modernist Translation: The Poetics of Race, Gender, and Queerness . In the book, Dr. Bancroft explores three translations from Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) through the lens of queer theory. While Queering Modernist Translation is a critical book based on research, Dr. Bancroft specialized in the creative writing track within their English major and was specifically interested in poetry during their time at Texas A&M. From the beginning, they always knew that they wanted to be a publi...