“All students in the program were good writers,” Oshiki said, “But we would still get our papers back from instructors thoroughly bloodied with corrections and suggestions. We learned to expect and welcome this close attention and to assess others’ work as well as our own writing in the same careful manner. In our learning climate, the idea was that good ideas deserve to be understood, and suggestions to improve our writing were intended to promote that.” Beth’s personality and interests are well suited to the work she does for

Pacific Crest. “I was voted Most Likely to Become a Professional Student by my high school graduating class. That implies ‘self-grower,’ right?” she asks, hopefully. She continues, “I am interested in a lot of different things, and so I had a hard time settling on a major for my undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. I ultimately chose Communication Arts/Rhetoric because UW has a great program that includes a lot of cognitive psychology, nonverbal and small group communication, language development, and also a smattering of history, philosophy, literature, and learning theories.”

Beth still enjoys exploring other disciplines when she gets to edit or proof some of our student texts and faculty development materials. “I’m the guinea pig reader who catches things that might confuse novices,” she says. “Good ideas deserve to be understood by as many readers as possible. I try to help promote people’s ideas by helping to make them as clear as they can be."