This week we caught up with Becky Wallace, one of Queen’s University’s amazing dons! Becky is a returning don who loves Queen’s so much that after finishing her undergraduate degree, decided to stay and continue her studies here as a graduate student! She’s friendly and quick to laugh with an easy-going manner that puts you right at ease, and in case she wasn’t cool enough, she always has her loveable dog Crosby by her side to brighten up your day! So stay a while and meet one of Queen’s finest (and one of Queen’s furriest)!
Name: Becky Wallace
Title: Residence Don, Chown Hall
Year /Studying: Master’s Candidate in Political Studies
Tell us about yourself! Where are you from? How many siblings do you have?
So I’m from a small town called Bradford. It’s just outside of the GTA and it’s a pretty small town but I love it. I’ve worked for my town for ten years now doing recreation work and stuff so I like going back home and everything. I come from a really big family, so I have how many siblings? I’ve got three brothers and one sister and I’m also lucky enough for my siblings to have married wonderful people and whatnot so I have two sisters-in-law and between them we’ve got two nieces and a nephew so they’re pretty cute. I love them. It’s kind of my favorite job, being an aunt.
What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not working?
I have a lot of things I like to do. I would say I love going to Starbucks. Going to Starbucks, watching YouTube videos… (Becky laughs) but I also really like playing piano, reading, writing, running, walks down by the water here and stuff. I’ve got a lot of things I enjoy doing, but I definitely spend some quality time on YouTube.
Do you volunteer with any organizations on or off campus? Are you involved in any other extra-curricular activities?
Yeah, actually I’ve done a lot of stuff throughout my undergrad and a bit of things now in grad studies, so let’s think about this. I volunteered my first few years of undergrad for accessibility Queen’s, and then I got very involved with InvisAbilities on Queen’s campus. I was a member there, I ran a dog therapy program with them and then last year I was on the executive for it, so that was awesome. I’ve also been a peer-mentor for Health Counseling & Disability Services for, this is my fourth year now doing that. What else have I done? I was a research assistant last year a while in political studies with a PhD candidate, I’m a member of the Liberal party so I’ve done some stuff with political parties. (To Crosby) What else do we do Cros? I’m trying to think what else I’ve been involved with – oh Residence Life, obviously, right on! I’m also a Teaching Assistant in Political Science, so I’m a TA for the first year politics course here and I think that’s got to be about it. I would think. But I also work my job at home throughout the year correspondently and that works out well. I like it!
Wow! That’s a lot! You’re a busy lady!
(Becky laughs) I’m okay with that though, I like being busy!
So you’re a returning Don, what made you want to do Donning again?
I had the most incredible experience working in ResLife last year. It was honestly the most fun, phenomenal community living experience I could have asked for. I had just a fantastic floor, I had a really great Residence staff team, they’ve become- between my floor and my team last year I have some of the closest friends that I could have asked for in University and honestly it wasn’t even a question of whether or not I wanted to come back, I just loved the whole idea of residence and stuff after that. It was really good, a really positive experience.
Would you recommend “donning” to other people?
100%. I think it’s such a great job. It’s given me a lot of different types of interpersonal skill sets that you really don’t otherwise practice a lot, but I think it’s such a good way to engage with where you go to school and where you live so I’d highly recommend it to anybody.
What about being a Master’s candidate? What do you like about that?
I just like school! I’m kind of a nerd. I don’t know, I joke around about how much I don’t like homework and stuff but the fact is I love what I study. I was never actually supposed to be in politics, that’s a really kind of fun story. I ended up taking the first year politics course because I hated this history class, had to get out of it, needed to take something else and politics was the only thing that was open at the time. I was pretty set against it but was like, “Okay I guess I’ll take it because it’s got to be better than this history course.” Sure enough, I ended up loving it! And I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve studied since. So that was a really, really good experience and it’s hard to know what you want to do with your life at this point, especially this time last year I had absolutely no idea so I did decide that politics was something I was passionate about and something that I really enjoyed academically and that I wanted to keep going with that as far as I could.
Tell us about Crosby!
This is my handsome poodle. He’s a poodle-terrier mix actually and he’s a rescue pup that I did a lot of training with. He is hilarious. I think anybody that meets him does at some point tend to fall in love with him, though it can take a while I’m sure for some people! He’s my first dog; my family never, ever ever had dogs and whatnot so he was the first. Like I asked for this for twenty plus years! Every Christmas and every birthday and whatnot! But yeah, my doctor recommended it, I think when I was in second year university so that’s when I got my puppy and he just, oh he just makes every day better!
What does a day in your life look like?
I tend to spend a lot of it reading, (grad school!) but I don’t know. Usually I spend a lot of time hanging out, talking with a lot of people, playing with my dog, going for walks, getting work done, and spending probably quite a bit of time on YouTube. But I do like to run a lot and stuff so that’s fun. I don’t know I would say one of the things about grad school is your day-to-day could be so different depending on what you’re working on and who you’re working with and when you have classes and all that kind of stuff. I kind of like it that way, I like the kind of different everyday experiences.
What would you like to do in the future, either as a career or a hobby?
I actually have no clue what I’d really like to do with my life. I just really like school, so I think that’s something I’m just going to kind of keep going with until I don’t like school anymore. I don’t know, I’ve got a really diverse set of interests and education and whatnot. So probably, if I could be a professional student I, you know I’m going try to see how long I can keep this up for. I don’t know I’m pretty content with a lot of my hobbies and interests and things so hopefully those all work out, but who knows? At this point there’s no way to know. I’m okay with it though. I like the uncertainty of not necessarily… like as much as it sucks not knowing where you’re going to end up, there’s that’s something kind of awesome about not knowing where you’re going to be a year from now, and the excitement around like, what you could be up to at this time next year. It’s a process. Some days after you talk to friends and they have very extensive plans I’m like, “Maybe I should plan more.” But whatever! It’s overrated.