|
As a teenager, Jonathan
Blasberg was a high school
dropout, choosing to hang
out with friends in Victoria.
Now, the new humanities
graduate is passionate about
learning and is aiming for
a doctorate and a career in
academics.
Today’s Blasberg, thoroughly
at home in academia,
eagerly discusses the challenges
of “sentential calculus,”
the intricate rules governing
sentence structure, and other
complex courses he took to
complete his BA linguistics
honours program.
“I was always independent
and stubborn. School just
didn’t work for me before,”
explains Blasberg, who grew
up in Vancouver and dropped
out of several high schools in
the Lower Mainland before
finding his way back to university
through an inherent
love of language.
After taking catch-up
courses, Blasberg attended
UVic and realized that he
loved coming to grips with
the underpinning principles
of language. Along the way,
he was awarded the Edgar
Ferrar Corbet Scholarship for
proficiency in English.
For his honours thesis,
Blasberg learned American
sign language. It takes several
minutes and dozens of sign language
gestures for him to
explain verbally the crux of
his thesis, which looked at
how a sign language speaker
uses spatially directed verbs
such as “look at” to reflect
how the mind works in relation
to language.
Not content with just
learning, Blasberg also helped
to revive a UVic linguistics
course union, “The Underlings,”
and became its
president. Members address
student issues and raise money
to support a linguistics
scholarship.
Blasberg would like to
teach at the university level
and start a business. He’ll
make a point of looking
out for others who have
yet to find their calling in
life because, he says, “lack
of direction should never
be confused with lack of
potential.”
|
