50th Anniversary Memory of the Week: Zak Jones (BA 2017)

My best memory of my time at Woodsworth College is my first one. After anxiously enrolling in the Millie Rotman Shime Academic Bridging Program in the summer of 2013, I started my one-year trial (and tribulation) at UofT, hoping to become a full-time student the following year. My peers and I waited in the beautiful brick-lined halls of Woodsworth for our professor, J. Barbara Rose, to come in and unlock the door. I was journaling, trying to capture the mood of the people around me just before we entered the classroom. Instead, I captured my own.

I wrote:

It seems as though no one wants to actually cross the threshold
as though if to do so would mean resigning oneself to an irrevocable change
and now the professor calls, 'Come in! Come in! Do come in. What are we waiting for?'
and backpacks are slung
and the new students hurry in
and the question hangs in the air only for me.
Well, what am I waiting for?

And in the year of the Bridging Program and in the years since I know that the change was irrevocable. Professor Rose taught us how to read and write like serious students, sure, but she also taught us how to embrace the future and to want better of and for our world. Through that threshold at Woodsworth, I walked into the most serious fever dream imaginable, a life of knowledge and openness, and I cannot go back. I do not want to.

After graduation...

Once I graduated, I went straight into a Master's degree program studying creative writing and English here at the University of Toronto. I produced a thesis that would become my first novel. From there, I entered doctoral studies in English, still here in Toronto, where I continue to write academically and creatively. I have also been lucky enough to teach our brilliant undergraduates across UofT's three campuses. I am working as hard as I can to turn my experience here into a fully-fledged academic career.

Read more about Zak in From soldier to scribe: PhD student and WDW alum Zak Jones explores veterans' narratives in literature.