Deana Meyer

Home Undergraduate Program Life After the Department Deana Meyer

BA in Linguistics, 1991
Returning to graduate school; formerly on the management team of an Internet Service Provider

As the first employee of an Internet Service Provider, I had to wear many different hats. I ended up part of the management team for that ISP. I'm currently returning to school to gather the necessary undergrad classes to enroll in a Masters in Computer Science Program at Portland State University. I hope to get some more industry experience, then to teach computer programming at the community college level.

When I was a Linguistics major, there was a running joke: "What do you DO with a Linguistics undergraduate degree?" and the answer was "Anything but Linguistics!" That has certainly been true for me. In the eleven years since I graduated I have only directly used Linguistics once at work, when a coworker had written a password-generating script that was spitting out passwords that were horrible to pronounce. Within a day, customer and staff complaints were so numerous that she was told to fix it immediately. She came to me in frustration because she had no idea how to make it better. Any linguist would know that the script should first make syllables and then put the syllables into words. We fixed her script in 40 minutes by allowing only syllables of the type consonant-vowel, and putting a number or two numbers in the beginning, end or middle of the resulting 'word' (needed for security).

There are many skills that one gains in Linguistics courses that transfer well into many different fields/jobs. Some that I've found the most useful are:

• Seeing patterns in data:
  Much of linguistic analysis involves looking at data, quickly finding the pattern(s) within the data, and logically arguing for how that data can be accounted for. This ability has been useful to me in almost every job, but especially useful in: technical support; database design;(computer) system administration; office procedure/process design; and grant reporting (showing how your grant met the outcomes of the funding institution). It also proved helpful in sales/marketing.
• Capturing the generalization:
  In syntax and Phonology classes, we were always encouraged to extend/modify the working set of rules in ways that "captured the generalization." The ability to recognize solutions that capture the generalization has been especially useful to me in programming and database design, because solutions that fail to capture the generalization prove very hard or impossible to maintain/change.
• Clarity in writing:
  We were encouraged in Linguistics classes to write our papers so clearly that if some non-linguist were to pick up the paper and read it, they would be able to follow the argumentation. Being able to write with clarity, and to argue my point well, and persuasively, has often proven useful to me on the job.
• Excellence in teaching:
  One of the reasons I became a Linguistics major was the excellence in teaching. I stumbled upon a Linguistics class in my first quarter and found that the Linguistics classes all had excellent instruction. In many jobs you end up training others, and/or giving presentations to others, so it is useful to have seen lots of effective teaching throughout your four years of college.

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