Lynn Long finds the writer inside herself with SEG funding

When the Staff Enhancement Grant committee met last December, they reviewed many applications from members seeking funding. Among the recipients they chose was Lynn Long. who works at the Centre for Teaching Excellence. In her own words, here is Lynn's experience:

Through the generosity of the Staff Enhancement Grant, I was able to partially cover the cost of taking MAIS 616 “Writing the Self: The Experience and Potential of Writing for the Purpose of Personal Development” through Athabasca University.

I signed up for this course because of a growing desire to explore who I might be as a writer and how I might be able to use writing to benefit others. Although I had briefly explored writing in my early academic years, during high school and university my focus shifted to primarily STEM subjects. Only in recent years, as I moved into a less STEM-focused career, had I begun to once again consider developing my writing skills with the goal of possibly using them to benefit children.

This course kept me busy exploring all kinds of writing.  Assigned daily guided writing, weekly assignments involving writing poetry and fiction, along with reading and research related to the use of writing as a therapeutic tool, all broadened my experience and understanding of what writing is and how it can be used.

At the encouragement of my instructor, I even entered one of my poems in a poetry contest and submitted one of my papers to an academic journal.  Throughout the course, I was also able to consider my long-term goal of writing for children and have completed an initial draft of a children’s book.