Erika Dyson

A Second Chance to Shine - The Before and After Lives of Mount Holyoke's Older Learners
Vista, Summer 1997, by Emily Harrison Weir

Intellectual Crop Rotation

Erika Dyson always thought she should go to college, but working seventy hours weekly as a theatrical costumer didn't leave time. Eventually, she says, "There was too much of myself that I had to put aside for theater. I realized I had to do something new so the part of me that wasn't growing could catch up to the part that had already grown so much." Erika Dyson

Twenty-nine-year-old Erika Dyson spent years building a career as a theatrical costumer. But just as it was finally soaring--bringing her steady work in the U.S. and abroad -- she burned out. After one vacation, Dyson broke down crying at the prospect of returning to her high-stress job. "The part of my brain that likes to learn was shut off, and I realized I needed the educational equivalent of crop rotation to keep growing," she says. At that moment she knew she needed to go back to college, even if she wasn't sure what to study.

Originally planning a religion major, Dyson is now designing her own major involving nonfiction narrative writing about women's lives. She calls MHC "a crash course in who you are," and revels in studying subjects as disparate as quantitative reasoning, printmaking, and Japanese. "It's a luxury to devote yourself to seeing what you're capable of," she says.