To begin, I would be stunned if you hadn’t heard of this person before amongst the chatter between current DePauw students, graduates, and even from the mouths of the wonderful tour guides. Despite this, I still feel the need to share my experience with Professor Andrea Sununu because I am part of the many students that she has positively impacted on this campus.

Scrolling through the Schedule of Classes close to this time last year, I knew I wanted to take some interesting and meaningful classes for the second semester of my freshman year. By the time I had sat down with my first year advisor, I had picked out Intro to Economics and International Politics and was already slated for my second round of the Media Fellows Colloquium course, but I still wasn’t sure of that last class. Scrolling through the course guide once again, I stopped on an English course, Reading Literature: Poetry, Fiction and Drama, being taught by Professor Sununu.

Like many other students or the entire campus really, I had heard little snippets about how she taught her classes and how the silhouette of a student and Professor Sununu could be seen from the first floor of Asbury reviewing a paper at 11:00 p.m. at night. Most importantly though, I heard how she made you a better writer, so I went for it and was luckily enrolled.

Class with Professor Sununu turned out to be exactly what I pictured class with a liberal arts professor to look like: small size, a good bit of discussion, and invitations over to his or her house. What I didn’t imagine was all the work that went into her class. From the beginning, we were working. What does that look like? Having an essay due a week after the first day of class and a workload that does not end (right now, my first semester of my sophomore year feels like a breeze).

However, I do not regret taking her class. I loved it. Despite the numerous drafts of essays that I ended up writing, late nights studying and reading, and that final, I achieved my goal of becoming a better writer, and I even found a new interest for studying English so much so that I recently declared one of my majors with, of course, Professor Sununu, as my advisor.

At DePauw, the professors do really impact you, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.