{"id":47807,"date":"2018-06-15T11:36:02","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T15:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=47807"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:10:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:10:41","slug":"spring-convocation-2018-patience-pays-off-for-carleton-graduate","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/spring-convocation-2018-patience-pays-off-for-carleton-graduate\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Convocation 2018: Patience Pays Off for Carleton Graduate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n\n \n \n \n \n
\n\n
<\/div>\n \n
\n
\n\n

\n Spring Convocation 2018: Patience Pays Off for Carleton Graduate\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Shortly before Francine Harris began her Master of Arts at Carleton, she suffered a head injury that triggered chronic migraines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn bad days I couldn\u2019t do anything, and on good days I tried to cram it all in,\u201d said Harris, who experienced about 25 migraines a month. \u201cBut that just led to more bad days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was in 2013, after the Corner Brook, N.L., native had received a Bachelor of Arts, highest honours in English, with a minor in Communication Studies from Carleton. She\u2019d always felt at home in the university\u2019s English Department and wanted to continue her education, but decided to take a leave to learn to manage her new illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning to Let Go<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Time off tempered her expectations and made her a bit more realistic, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think early on I was bit too much of a perfectionist and I learned to let that go.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patience paid off. Harris now lives southwest of Montreal, where she\u2019s looking for a teaching job at a C\u00c9GEP, the public post-secondary collegiate institutions in Quebec. She completed her coursework last term, and in April she submitted her MA thesis that examined the themes of disguise, forgetting and memory in two anonymous medieval stories – Havelok the Dane <\/em>and Sir Isumbras<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHer thesis demonstrated an impressive mastery of medieval theories of memory as well as of heroic tales written in English and French between 1200 and 1500,\u201d said English Prof. Siobhain Bly Calkin, Harris\u2019s thesis supervisor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outstanding Academic Achievement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The examiners of her MA defence said it was one of the best theses they had ever examined and it earned her a Senate Medal for Outstanding Academic Achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is very difficult to begin a program and then return to finish it years later,\u201d said Calkin. \u201cThe fact that Francine did so, and with such an impressive academic performance, is a testament to her grit and determination, as well as to her intellectual prowess.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly before Francine Harris began her Master of Arts at Carleton, she suffered a head injury that triggered chronic migraines. \u201cOn bad days I couldn\u2019t do anything, and on good days I tried to cram it all in,\u201d said Harris, who experienced about 25 migraines a month. \u201cBut that just led to more bad days.\u201d That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":47815,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[25],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-47807","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-student-experience"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/47807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/47807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97763,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/47807\/revisions\/97763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=47807"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=47807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}