Communications committee member Sheila Hurt interviewed Brooke Linn, winner of PACADA’s 2013 Outstanding New Professional Award

This year’s winner of PACADA’s Outstanding New Professional Award, Brooke Linn, has something of a split personality (career-wise, at least). While she loves her job as an advisor in the College of Pharmacy, she also puts in time every day pursuing her dream of being a published author. When we talked about her career path so far, it became clear that she is on two paths simultaneously that occasionally intersect in interesting ways.

I asked Brooke about her childhood dreams, and what she thought she wanted to be when she grew up. She said that when she was in kindergarten, she wanted to be a cheerleader. Throughout elementary and middle school, her dreams turned more towards writing and teaching. By high school, she planned to be a lawyer. She attended Purdue and started out majoring in Management, thinking that would help her own her own bookstore. But when she realized she would have no time for writing as a small business owner, she decided to switch to Elementary Education. Along with learning to teach, she would learn what children liked to read, and that would help inform her other career as a writer.

After graduation, Brooke taught second grade for several years, first in Florida and then back in Indiana. She became a reading interventionist and literacy coach, helping other teachers improve their teaching. During this whole time, she continued to work on her other career goal as well, and started an MFA in creative writing. Eventually she started thinking about working at Purdue as an advisor. She applied for a few jobs but was never even interviewed, since she had not yet completed her master’s degree. She got some advice from her own undergraduate advisor, Jane Ann Dimitt, and kept applying. Her persistence eventually paid off when someone who interviewed her but turned her down recommended her for an advising job in pharmacy, and she was hired.

Brooke loves her current job, saying the students are wonderful and the people she works with are both motivating and supportive. They make her want to be a better advisor and continue to learn more. The biggest change from her previous career as a teacher is the schedule, but in a way it’s easier for her now because she doesn’t take work home and for the first time ever, she has a lunch hour available to spend time writing. She has completed her first young adult novel and is working on the sequel; she also wants to write picture books for children.

Brooke has found an interesting way to combine her varied career interests by creating and teaching a writing course for PharmD students whose skills could use some polishing. Even though it was not technically required, her students had almost perfect attendance last semester and suggested she offer a longer version of the course for next year. She also works with students who decide they do not want pharmacy, and is looking forward to learning more about career advising by taking the online course sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Advising that starts in a few weeks.

Though she certainly appreciates winning the Outstanding New Professional Award, Brooke wanted to emphasize that she doesn’t think she does anything out of the ordinary as an academic advisor. If that’s the case, then Pharmacy students are clearly in good hands!