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We interviewed Natalia Hunter, PFAU Academic Writing Coach, about the art of writing a literary essay. For students accustomed to essays that require a lot of research, citations, and arguments on a specific topic, writing an essay for English 101 or Grade 12 English can be a real puzzle. This type of essay necessitates a more in-depth analysis of a particular text, or oftentimes only an excerpt of text. At first glance, it may seem easy, but it actually takes a high level of skill to write a strong literary essay. We thought this topic would be helpful to our listeners who are attempting their first literary essay or trying to improve upon a poor grade. Remember that writing is a practice that takes time and effort to improve upon.

Copy of Natalia Hunter Photo 2 300x300 The Art of Writing a Literary Essay: Interview with Natalia Hunter

Natalia has a Master’s in English from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Bachelors of English in Medieval Studies. While pursuing graduate studies, Natalia was a teaching assistant for the Laurier English department, leading weekly tutorial groups and working closely with students to assist with their understanding of the course material and help with their essay writing and critical thinking skills. Her own academic experience and work as a teaching assistant have given Natalia a keen eye for what it takes to do excellent literary analysis.

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What would you say is the difference between a research paper and an English paper? How is research conducted in English compared to say the Social Sciences?

There’s a big difference. Especially with the Social Sciences, like you said, English qualitative versus quantitative. The main difference is in the research methods. In the social science, you’re focusing on experimental studies, while in English you’re looking for the answers within the text itself. So when you’re researching for a Social Sciences paper, you’re going to look out for other evidence to include in your argument. In an English paper, you’re looking at other scholarly opinions about the text. The main reason why you do that in English is to ground your argument within everybody else’s opinions. You want to make sure that you have a full scope of what the topic entails and that you can shape your argument. You can either disagree or agree with what the scholarly opinion that is out there. There’s definitely a massive difference between a regular research paper for the Social sciences and a research paper for English. In addition, there’s definitely techniques and skills that you have to develop to know how to research English papers that dependent upon how popular or how old the book is.

For example, a Victorian novel is going to have a lot more out there compared to a book published in the last few years. The amount of previous research on the book that you want to write about is another kind of difficulty that you have to face when researching for an English paper. I think a good example is if you’re looking into Jane Eyre. As a classic Victorian novel, there’s so much out there about this literary era as well as the book itself. There are several opinions, books, and journal articles written about Jane Eyre. Although there is a lot of preexisting on Jane Eyre, this in itself can be overwhelming. Therefore, it is important to narrow your topic down. You can do this by choosing a character, like Bertha. However, even in that case, you need to have an angle or perspective that you want to discuss about Bertha. For instance, if you’re going to do a gendered reading of Jane Eyre and you’re going to focus on feminist theories, then you would start looking at the key words when you search up articles about Jane Eyre. You would want to look at the things that include feminist theory and things about how the female characters are treated. You want to make sure that you’re focusing on a specific angle rather than just really looking taking a broad summative approach.

How can high school students in Grade 11 and 12 prepare themselves for the rigors of university English?

First off, the difference between high school and university is that you’re going to be reading so much more. This can be a massive shock to the system because you’ll have multiple readings a week. You could be reading a whole novel a week (300-400 pages) and just have one or two lectures on it before moving on. So it is very fast paced, and I think that that could be something that you could gradually get used to by increasing your reading capacity in advance of attending university. I recommend planning out and scheduling your reading times. This structuring can can especially helpful if you kind of have a numerical mind. If you like to think in numbers, breaking down the novel into small goals of reading a certain number of pages (ie. 25 pages) a day can help you to feel less overwhelmed with the amount of reading that you need to complete.

What would you say is your biggest takeaway from your English degree in terms of becoming a confident writer?

I think my main takeaway with writing was that there’s so many ways to phrase things and put things in a sentence and everybody’s going to have a different way of doing it. I think that’s amazing that everyone can have a different voice and style. Everyone can be tasked with the same thing and not say it in the same way. It’s okay to not write something in the same way that someone else does. There’s definitely ways of improving your writing style. Obviously, being more concise and using appropriate language are useful skills. But at the end of the day, I think it’s really amazing that everyone can have their own style. In the beginning, developing your own style can be overwhelming because you’re thinking – “is everyone so much smarter than me?”; “what’s that person saying?”; “how are they saying it”; and so forth. You end up comparing yourself to someone else. I think at the end of the day, you’re never going to write something the same way as someone else, and that is a really good thing.

Recommended Books and Resources

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thank you, Natalia, for sharing the excellent advice with us and our readers!

Missed Podcast? Watch Video Here:

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For more advice about writing, check out our weekly, podcast, videos, or subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

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To get more help with your assignments, book a 20 minute discovery session with us and start your journey to reaching your full potential on the page, and in life.

Both the written, visual, audio, and audiovisual content of this post has been created by and is the intellectual property of Lisa Pfau and PFAU Academic Writing. Please do not replicate any of the above content without our consent. However, please do feel free to share this post and its authorship widely.

Sustainable Business – Remarkable Rejects: Interview with Braeden Wolf

By Pfau Marketing

October 20, 2021

1081 Views

Blog

We interviewed Braeden Wolf, founder of Remarkable Rejects, about socially conscious business. We thought this topic would be helpful to our listeners who are looking for meaningful employment and/or social change. In university, everything seems possible and many of us are inspired to create change in the world after graduation. However, after entering the workforce, we may start to feel discouraged and lose our spark. So, why not bypass the corporate world and its expectations and start something that you care about and that can create the change that you want to see in the world?

Screen Shot 2021 10 16 at 8.20.29 PM 283x300 Sustainable Business – Remarkable Rejects: Interview with Braeden Wolf

Braeden is a recent business graduate from Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario, who is passionate about nutrition, natural movement, and cooking. After graduating, he was inspired to turn his passions into a business that would reduce food waste and increase healthy eating. Braeden is also an avid baseball player, and previously was a team member of the Great Lake Canadians.

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Tell us a little bit about your business. What inspired it?

Our business is called Remarkable Rejects, and our mission is preventing unnecessary food loss in Ontario. How we go about achieving that is through sourcing two types of produce from local farmers. The first type is produce that is cosmetically imperfect. It could be something that got banged by a tree branch while it was on the tree, a pepper that is too small, or a cucumber that has too much of curves in it. The second type is surplus produce. It’s really hard for farmers to grow the exact amount of produce that they need to meet their exact demand because they can’t perfectly predict their supply changes based on the weather patterns. They also can’t perfectly predict their demand for a certain type of produce. Whenever they end up with too much supply and not enough demand, a lot of that produce is going to go to waste. There are outlets to donate, but the amount of surplus far exceeds the amount that’s getting donated.

My inspiration came from a book that I read, which is called Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. In the book, a team of scientists and researchers from all over the world got together and made a list of around 150 comprehensive solutions on how we can avoid severe global warming issues. The third ranked solution was reducing food waste. Food waste has such a big impact because of the sheer quantity of food that’s being wasted. We’re not able to address the food waste issue around the world, but we’re trying to address a specific part of area and industry – Ontario’s supply chain.

How has your educational background helped you to develop this business? What are some key takeaways from your Undergraduate experience that are helping you now?

That’s a good question. First of all, I will talk about a few things that might be helpful for people who didn’t do a business degree. I think if you didn’t go to business school, one of the main misconceptions when you’re starting a business is that you have to come up with something brand new that no one has ever thought of before. And that is extremely hard, and almost never happens. If you just came up with something brand new, that can potentially be a bad idea. There’s a chance it’s a good idea, but it’s probably a bad idea if no one else is doing it in the world.

Instead, the easier approach has two paths. The first is taking an idea from somewhere else and doing it in a new geography where it hasn’t been implemented. The other path is to take a concept and improve upon it in a specific way and improve upon it by a lot. this is where a lot of the best businesses have come from. If you want to start a business, there’s no pressure to come up with something brand new.

Personally, I did two very different degrees: software engineering and business. I learned very different general themes from both. From my software engineering degree, I learned about budgeting time. The program is a ton of hours, and it forces you to have work ethic. It also forces you to break down a problem, which was helpful in brainstorming my business. From the business degree, one of my my main takeaways was learning to deal with ambiguity. In a lot of other programs, at least in engineering, every exam is multiple choice, which means answers are either right or wrong. There’s no ambiguity whatsoever. With business, you are literally making decisions all the time, but you have no idea what the right answer is because there’s way too many variables to know what’s going to happen. In real life, doing business is like that. You need to be comfortable with ambiguity as things don’t always go as planned. You can only make an informed decision as best you can and have a back-up plan in case it fails.

What advice would you give young students or adults who are thinking about starting something like Remarkable Rejects?

The biggest one, in my opinion, is if you want start a business, you should make sure that what you’re doing should be filling a need. Basically, the reason to start a business is you see a problem, and you don’t think anyone else can solve it. It’s extremely important to be certain of that. Otherwise, your business probably won’t be successful. Or, if someone else can also solve it, then you’re just gonna have annoying competition and you’re probably not gonna have a big enough market. In the end, you could probably make way more money doing other stuff that’s way easier. I would say that when you are thinking about starting a business, make sure there’s a problem that needs to be solved, and you think you’re the only or best person who can do it. Otherwise, I would do something else.

Recommended Books and Resources

The Lean Startup by Eric Reese

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken (Editor)

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Thank you, Braeden, for sharing the excellent advice with us and our readers!

Missed Podcast? Watch Video Here:

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For more advice about writing, check out our weekly, podcast, videos, or subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

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To get more help with your assignments, book a 20 minute discovery session with us and start your journey to reaching your full potential on the page, and in life.

Both the written, visual, audio, and audiovisual content of this post has been created by and is the intellectual property of Lisa Pfau and PFAU Academic Writing. Please do not replicate any of the above content without our consent. However, please do feel free to share this post and its authorship widely.

Sustainable Business – Remarkable Rejects: Podcast Episode Live!

By Pfau Marketing

October 16, 2021

1059 Views

Blog, Podcast

PFAU 30 panel 2 01 2 291x300 Sustainable Business Remarkable Rejects: Podcast Episode Live!

We interviewed Braeden Wolf, founder of Remarkable Rejects, is a recent business graduate from Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario, who is passionate about nutrition, natural movement, and cooking. This week’s episode is about socially conscious business. We thought this topic would be helpful to our listeners who are looking for meaningful employment and/or social change. In university, everything seems possible and many of us are inspired to create change in the world after graduation. However, after entering the workforce, we may start to feel discouraged and lose our spark. So, why not bypass the corporate world and its expectations and start something that you care about and that can create the change that you want to see in the world.

HIGHLIGHTS

Business background and inspiration of Remarkable Rejects

How can students benefit from Remarkable Rejects

Tips to consider when developing a business

Challenges faced when starting a business

Advice for students who want to start a socially conscious business

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To get more help with academic writing, application coaching, or professional development, book a 20 minute discovery call with us and start your journey to reaching your full potential on the page, and in life.

All the written, visual, audio, and audiovisual content of this post has been created by and is the intellectual property of Lisa Pfau and PFAU Academic Writing. Please do not replicate any of the above content without our consent. However, please do feel free to share this post and its authorship widely.

Starting a Non-Profit: Podcast Episode Live!

By Pfau2018

May 29, 2021

542 Views

Blog, Podcast

Screen Shot 2021 04 25 at 9.34.10 PM 300x292 Starting a Non Profit: Podcast Episode Live!

We interview Megan Kee, the founder of 20/20 Arts, a non-profit organization dedicated to the production of innovative art projects that raise awareness, visibility, and fund for charitable organizations about Starting a Non-Profit. This week’s episode is part of our Careers in the Arts series, where we talk to young professionals with Fine Arts or Liberal Arts degrees, who have established themselves in an interesting and fulfilling profession. Deciding what to do after university, especially with a degree like a Bachelor of Arts that is often general and does not prepare you for any specific profession, can be daunting. What most students don’t realize though is that your Arts degree has provided you with a variety of transferable skills, such as critical thinking, research, organization, and communication that can be applied to a number of different professions. We hope that through these interviews students will feel less overwhelmed and hopeful about their career options.

HIGHLIGHTS

Path of discovery towards career goals

How does education help with building skills and confidence

Advice for young adults on careers in the Arts

Strategies for work-life balance

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To get more help with academic writing, application coaching, or professional development, book a 20 minute discovery call with us and start your journey to reaching your full potential on the page, and in life.

All the written, visual, audio, and audiovisual content of this post has been created by and is the intellectual property of Lisa Pfau and PFAU Academic Writing. Please do not replicate any of the above content without our consent. However, please do feel free to share this post and its authorship widely.

Getting Comfortable with Conflict as a Woman: Interview with Alexandra Kutilin

By Pfau Marketing

May 19, 2021

688 Views

Blog

We interview Alexandra Kutilin, a full-time MBA student at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, about being a strong woman and speaking up for what you want and need. This week’s episode is for all the strong women out there, who struggle with balancing their tactical professional self and caring compassionate self. I know this is an internal conflict that I deal with regularly as an entrepreneur in a care-giving and creative sector. How can I highlight my expertise, intelligence, and strength without losing the softer side of myself? This struggle is particularly evident in negotiations, where we are required to bargain for something we want, such as a better grade, performance from a group mate, raise from our boss, or new opportunity. Women are typically socialized to step back, give in, and avoid conflict. So, how do you harness your inner shark without losing yourself?

Alexandra Kutilin 8 200x300 Getting Comfortable with Conflict as a Woman: Interview with Alexandra Kutilin

Alex is passionate about career mentorship, professional development, and entrepreneurship for women, topics that she regularly explores on her blog. As an ambitious young career woman, she is also very active on campus. She is currently the President of the Graduate Women’s Council, a Student Ambassador, and a Mentors in Business participant, and has been a competitor in the 2019 BC MBA Games and 2020 National MBA Games.

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Negotiation, or more specifically, conflict is an area that women stereotypically have been socialized to avoid. What strategies do you have for individuals who find negotiations challenging because of a fear of conflict or disapproval?

For this question, three things come to mind. First, recognizing that I have my own thoughts and perspectives, which I can get into in a little bit. Second, being prepared by going into a negotiation having done the research. Third, knowing that you can just chill out and keep your cool in a situation that can get very tense. Building these skills and confidence takes time and practice, and I think are something everyone should invest in.

We are in negotiations all the time, and some of them are comfortable, some of them are not. However, if you prepare yourself for different situations, you can get more comfortable by actually being in them as yourself. This means that you are not overly concerned with sounding silly, which oftentimes is the internal voice that discourages us. I feel like this is a huge barrier for women in particular as we are socialized from a young age to be people pleasers. I think that, as I move on in my career, I am starting to get used to that, and I do not experience it as much as I did when I was younger.

Business is typically viewed as a male pursuit. Where do you think that comes from and what can we do to encourage more young women to consider business?

I think it’s a combination of the sentiment is something “men have always done”, traditional gender roles, and the way that history has portrayed those roles. Even though the Western workplaces slowly started to welcome women into their ranks into the early to mid 20th century, this assumption persists.

Things are slowly changing as we see more female CEOs and business leaders. I also see more young women in my MBA classes. I think it is important to have strong female role models for young women, so that they can see that it’s possible to be a businesswoman.

For undergraduate students out there who are considering an MBA in the future, do you have any advice for them?

Definitely. Looking back now and reflecting on my experience, the things that I know now were not obvious at first. My goal was to figure out what I wanted to do, and I did that by taking initiative, pushing my comfort zone, and trusting myself.

First, take initiative with the goal of learning, instead of the goal of getting something out of the experience, like a job or a raise.

Second, take chances and push your comfort zone. I don’t just mean blindly say: “okay I’m going to take this chance and step off the cliff”. For me, it is about taking chances when the stakes are a little beyond your healthy comfort zone. For me, that was losing a year’s income to enroll in an MBA program.

Finally, trust yourself and your ability to achieve a challenging goal. You have already accomplished the big goals that you set for yourself in the past, so what makes you think that you cannot do that again in your future?

Recommended Books and Resources

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto by Joan Reardon

Alexandra Kutilin

Thank you, Alex, for sharing the excellent advice with us and our readers!

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Missed the podcast? Listen here:

_

For more advice about writing, check out our weekly podcast or subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

_

To get more help with your assignments, book a 20 minute discovery session with us and start your journey to reaching your full potential on the page, and in life.

Both the written, visual, audio, and audiovisual content of this post has been created by and is the intellectual property of Lisa Pfau and PFAU Academic Writing. Please do not replicate any of the above content without our consent. However, please do feel free to share this post and its authorship widely.

Getting Comfortable with Conflict as a Woman: Podcast Episode Live!

By Pfau Marketing

May 15, 2021

546 Views

Blog, Podcast

PFAU 19 panel 3 300x300 Getting Comfortable with Conflict as a Woman: Podcast Episode Live!

We interview Alexandra Kutilin, a full-time MBA student at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, about being a strong woman and speaking up for what you want and need. This week’s episode is for all the strong women out there, who struggle with balancing their tactical professional self and caring compassionate self. I know this is an internal conflict that I deal with regularly as an entrepreneur in a care-giving and creative sector. How can I highlight my expertise, intelligence, and strength without losing the softer side of myself? This struggle is particularly evident in negotiations, where we are required to bargain for something we want, such as a better grade, performance from a group mate, raise from our boss, or new opportunity. Women are typically socialized to step back, give in, and avoid conflict. So, how do you harness your inner shark without losing yourself?

HIGHLIGHTS

Why more women should consider business and pursuing an MBA

How are things different for women in business

Advice for female students struggling to find their inner shark

Negotiation tips and tricks

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To get more help with academic writing, application coaching, or professional development, book a 20 minute discovery call with us and start your journey to reaching your full potential on the page, and in life.

All the written, visual, audio, and audiovisual content of this post has been created by and is the intellectual property of Lisa Pfau and PFAU Academic Writing. Please do not replicate any of the above content without our consent. However, please do feel free to share this post and its authorship widely.

Pfau is Making Some Updates

By Pfau Marketing

March 6, 2021

549 Views

Blog

Hi Everyone!

Pfau is currently undergoing improvements to our website, social media accounts, and podcasts. We expect to complete all of the updates before September 2021. Thank you for your patience as we undergo these changes!

We are still open for business and taking new clients. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out!

Stay tuned for upcoming stuff!

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To get more help with academic writing, application coaching, or professional development, book a free discovery call with us or sign up for one of our writing courses and start your journey to reaching your full potential on the page, and in life.

All the written, visual, audio, and audiovisual content of this post has been created by and is the intellectual property of Lisa Pfau and PFAU Academic Writing. Please do not replicate any of the above content without our consent. However, please do feel free to share this post and its authorship widely.