By Patrick Coy-Bjork ‘24
As the younger sibling of a former Macalester student, my last name occasionally catches the attention of faculty and students around campus. Some have even identified me as my sister’s sibling by my face alone! When I meet those who knew Maddie, they always reminisce with big smiles and kind words. This is a personal joy I get to experience at Macalester: bonding with strangers over our shared appreciation for my wonderful sister.
When tasked with writing a profile on a recent Macalester alumnus, I naturally texted Maddie, and had the joy of spending an hour talking over her experience at Mac and what she’s been up to since–with a focus on all things English-related. The following is a summary of our conversation.
Maddie graduated from Macalester in 2019 with a major in Philosophy and a minor in English. This minor, she recounted, was something she stumbled into unintentionally. While meeting with her advisor at the beginning of her junior year, she realized that she had already accidentally fulfilled the English minor because of all the classes she had taken just out of interest. Some of her favorite English courses were Screenwriting with Peter Bognanni, Shakespeare with Penelope Geng, and “From Eden to the Apocalypse” with Ben Voigt. Maddie said that all three of these classes gave her the chance to explore and enjoy written works in a new way, and introduce her to texts that she might otherwise never have read.
At Macalester, Maddie also applied her creative writing skills in Mac’s sketch comedy group “Bad Comedy,” which was not something she expected to be doing when entering college, but she said that it was “the perfect org to be a part of” for her, as it gave her the opportunity to meet new people, express herself, and have fun in a group that was not very intimidating or time-demanding. She mentioned how a sketch she wrote for Bad Comedy actually ended up becoming a full TV pilot script she created for her previously mentioned screenwriting class. This pilot was a post-apocalyptic comedy titled “Boomtown.” Maddie also shared with me a fantastic Bad Com related anecdote that took place at the English-sponsored “Apps & Alums” event. She was talking with an alumnus, and he randomly mentioned to her that he had started a comedy org while at Macalester. When Maddie asked,
“Wait–are you talking about Bad Comedy?” He replied,
“Bad Comedy still exists!?”
He and his friends decided to start Bad Comedy after all being rejected from Mac’s improv group Fresh Concepts: a tradition that continues for many Bad Com members to this day.
In the summer after her junior year, Maddie conducted an internship with the independent nonprofit publishing company Graywolf Press in Minneapolis. Her position was “Development Intern,” with some of her responsibilities being event planning, database management, promotional material, and donor outreach. Additionally, at times she worked alongside some of the editors to read through manuscripts and give feedback. She appreciated how the internship gave her the opportunity to experience a wide range of the goings-on within a publishing company and learn directly from the professionals.
After graduating from Macalester, Maddie moved to Minneapolis. While there, she worked in event planning for an independent bookseller Magers & Quinn as well as in a restaurant. When the pandemic started, the need for in-person positions vanished, and so Maddie lost both jobs. She learned that several of her friends were in the same position: without a job and unsure what to do next. So, Maddie along with her partner and four other friends (who were all Mac alumni as well) decided to move to Brooklyn, New York and live together. Here, Maddie found a new remote job working for a mental health healthcare start-up: the company she continues to work for presently.
Maddie noted how her previous background was not in tech or healthcare, so it was funny to end up in a job like this. She said that she knows that it sounds like a generic talking point to say that “a liberal arts education prepares you for anything,” but she has found it to be very true, and she made a point to emphasize that your career path does not have to follow your major. In fact, the great majority of her alumni friends are now working in fields with no relation to their studies. Maddie described how there can be a lot of pressure on recent graduates that feel that they need to “immediately jump right out of college and be pursuing their passion, utilizing their major, and making money,” but Maddie said that she found a lot of success when she gave herself the leeway to just continue to pursue whatever opportunities interested her. This, she noted, was also how she picked her classes at Macalester: basing it off of present interest rather than so much of a prescribed plan. I really liked hearing from her that that kind of philosophy could be applied to the career field after college as well.
I asked Maddie what she might say to Mac seniors who were approaching graduation and uncertain of their future. She first wanted to say that anyone feeling directionless or aimless is in “very good company.” She and most of her friends felt the same way, and the people she knew that did seem to have a concrete plan ended up eventually shifting their plans and ending up doing very different things. She said that,
“When you’re talking with someone who’s further along in their career, it seems like there’s this narrative structure that makes a lot of sense: ‘they did this, which led them to this, which led to this obvious next step.’ The thing is, that narrative is only applied in hindsight; it’s only when you look back on your life that you see that. At the time, you’re just trying to make whatever decision you think is best.”
This is something that has really stuck with me from our conversation. Overall, Maddie said her biggest advice was “don’t hesitate to reach out to people in the Mac community” for networking purposes or otherwise, but most of all “don’t be so hard on yourself.” She thinks that it’s absolutely possible that what she’s doing now won’t be what she’s doing five years from now, and that uncertainty is ok. She says she’s “just as uncertain about the future now as when she was 22.” She’s “just not so stressed about it now.”
When I asked Maddie for any final thoughts she wanted to add, she talked about how much she loved the English department. She said,
“It’s truly such a special place at Macalester, and somebody who makes it so special is Jan Beebe. Jan made me feel so welcome even when I was just a little freshman– I wasn’t even a minor at that point; I just liked taking English classes and hanging out in the lounge. A big part of the reason I chose to be a minor was Jan. She is the warmest person in the world.”
I was happy to tell Maddie that those feelings are absolutely shared by us current student workers, and undoubtedly numerous majors and minors as well.
Thank you to Maddie for giving her time and lovely insight for this article! In classic sibling fashion, Maddie and I finished our call by both saying how we should talk more.