College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota
Twin Cities Campus
101 Pleasant St SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Renaissance Woman
Your major doesn't have to be a direct line to your career. Ask recent graduate Éireann Lorsung. She believes the College of Liberal Arts prepared her for anything that might come her way, both professionally and personally.
"To be a person in the world, a liberal education prepares you for that," Lorsung says.
In fact, when choosing from a myriad of college options, Lorsung chose the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts because she felt its size and diversity would allow her to study many different subjects and find interesting connections and collaborations among the courses offered by the college’s numerous departments.
Although Lorsung is pursuing a master of fine arts (MFA) degree in poetry, she isn't necessarily determined to teach or write poetry for a living after she graduates.
Éireann Lorsung
Photo by Amy Sheppard
"Writing poetry isn't a job choice for me," Lorsung says.
Instead, as was her view during her undergraduate years in the College of Liberal Arts (where she received a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Japanese), Lorsung considers college a time to learn about the world, not simply a time to master one's profession.
"You don't go to school for a career. You go to school for the pure sake of education, for the love of learning things," Lorsung says.
Lorsung, who considers horticulture one of her favorite undergraduate courses (taken as a CLA-granted elective), lives out her views. She is now beginning a professional career in clothing design, production and sales, a field for which her English, Japanese, and poetry majors didn't prepare her, at least not officially.
Her clothing line, called bara ("rose" in Japanese), is sold online and in a local store, The Design Collective, in Minneapolis' Uptown neighborhood.
"My mom always sewed when I was a kid. I've always drawn dresses and clothes," Lorsung says. She credits her desire to create unique clothing as arising "out of my environment as a child." In fact, Lorsung's designs are so cutting edge that they were recently highlighted at the hip Minnesota Museum of American Art's Fashion Weekend Preview Show.
Lorsung says the inspiration for her designs did not come from any clothing design course electives she could have taken while attending CLA. In fact Lorsung did not take any design courses. Instead, she credits as her muses the plants she observed in her horticulture class and the colors she studied in her art classes. And, after one look at her website, the influence of her poetry and her knowledge of Japanese style cannot be missed.
Lorsung hasn't completely ruled out teaching poetry at some future date. In fact, she currently teaches Intermediate Poetry (EngW 3104) and plans on applying for teaching positions after she receives her MFA.
However, in any event, because of the broad education she received in the College of Liberal Arts, Lorsung is confident she has grown to become a "person in the world" who is prepared for success, no matter what lies ahead in her personal and professional future, and no matter where her many talents and interests take her next.
About this profile: first published Spring 2006; written by Claire Joseph (B.A., Journalism, 2007)
Lorsung has recently published a book of poetry this past spring called Music For the Landing Plains by.