What is your job/position?
I am a compliance manager and privacy ffficer for a Community Health Center in Spokane, WA. I am part of the in-house counsel team here and provide legal services and help ensure compliance at our health centers.
Describe the path that took you from your American Studies degree to your current career or life situation.
I heard the same thing—you can do just about anything with an American Studies degree. It is a great general purpose education, although it was a little hard to find a position when I graduated with just an American Studies degree. This was right after the financial downturn of 2008–2009, so that likely contributed. I read on the BYU Law School webpage from Dean James Rasband about how a law degree was really a leadership degree, and that appealed to me. So I studied for and took the LSAT, applied to law schools, and decided to attend law school at Gonzaga in Spokane. I also decided to add on a business degree through their joint JD/MBA program, thinking it would help me if I worked as in-house counsel, which I hoped to do, or the business background would assist me if I decided to hang out my own shingle. I did an internship at CHAS Health during the end of my business program, and it resulted in a job offer eventually. My father was a physician, and I grew up working in his office, so it was a familiar background where I could apply my legal and business training to help the organization.
What are the specific competencies you cultivated as an American Studies student that you now use in your professional life and that set you apart from your colleagues?
I think this can vary widely from person to person, because there are so many courses that can help satisfy the requirements for the American Studies degree, or such was the case when I was there. I appreciated being able to take courses from a variety of disciplines that gave me a broad educational background. Studying the Constitution in American Heritage and US constitutional history gave me a deeper understanding of the founding and the principles the Founders utilized to try and cobble the states together and keep it together while protecting their fundamental rights. That led me to eventually reconsider law school, which I had written off earlier in my college days.
Evaluating the Constitution and the writing I did helped me in trying to organize my thinking. Writing out what you are thinking is a surefire way to expose errors in your thinking or logic. It helps to refine your ability to synthesize information and put together ideas. Much of the curriculum in the American Studies degree helps students to order and present their thinking in a clear, concise way.
What are some of the surprising ways in which your American Studies degree has helped you in your professional or personal life?
I think it helped me with law school and understanding more about the constitutional structure and history of the US. It was a broad degree that has exposed me to a variety of areas, and that has helped me to have talking points with others about an array of subjects. I still like to read in the news articles about the legal system.
What do you wish you had known as an American Studies student? What advice would you share with current students?
Just study what interests you. College is a time to study what you want for a period, and that becomes a more difficult thing to do as time goes on and responsibilities increase.