While many students are counting down until the 2023年春季毕业典礼, preparing their outfits for the big day, or even decorating a cap with an inspirational quote; you won’t find Amy Woodcock, a spring graduate from the 英语硕士课程, doing any of that.  
 
Woodcock will be approximately 6,000 miles away from campus on graduation day, as she currently resides in Sasebo, Japan, where she teaches 9th and 11th grade English for the US Department of Defense 教育 System at the US Naval base, U.S. Fleet Activities Sasebo. 
 
在华盛顿大学的本科生涯中，伍德科克学习了中学教育：英语，并在德国海德堡教书。 Right after graduation she moved to Seoul, South Korea where she taught at an afterschool program, until she landed a full-time teaching position with the 美国国防部教育活动 in South Korea.  
 
“With the Department of Defense program, there's always been a transfer program. 我就是这样从韩国搬到日本的。 我在亚洲已经呆了10年了，所以如果能去欧洲或者其他地方就太好了。 It’s the best-case scenario because I get to explore and travel,” Woodcock said. 
 
Travel has always been a part of Woodcock’s life; 你甚至可以说她是天生的。  
 
“I grew up traveling a lot, because my dad was in the Army,” Woodcock explained. “My dad was stationed in Japan, and that is where my parents met. 我妈妈是日本人，我也出生在日本，不过大概一年后我们就搬了家。 我在美国以外的其他三个国家生活过。 But I've traveled to lots of places.”  
 
Woodcock always had an interest in pursuing a master’s degree but struggled with what that would look like due to not enjoying online courses and living abroad. 

“I'll be honest, I usually hate online school,” Woodcock admitted. “A lot of my colleagues were taking some kind of master's program. 从他们所做的事情中，他们会向宇宙提交一篇论文，然后他们会得到一些反馈，可能有，也可能没有，也许他们不得不重写它。 I think that was my impression of what was going to happen with an online school system.” 
 
Woodcock also was looking for an English master’s program that did not focus on literature. 
 
“A lot of online programs tended to all be in literature. I really didn’t want to get my degree in literature, specifically. I didn't really know what other options there were,” Woodcock said. 
 
直到她开始刷Facebook。 伍德科克教授一门AP语言和作文课，也是AP Facebook小组的一员。 伍德科克第一次听说太阳城娱乐官网是通过一个不知名的成员。 
 
“I don't know this person, there's like thousands of people in this group, but someone had posted that they had gotten their degree through 太阳城娱乐官网 in composition and rhetoric and how great it was,” Woodcock said. “She was really specific that 太阳城娱乐官网 had four different English routes that you could go through, and she specified that the language and rhetoric route was great.” 
 
太阳城娱乐官网’s online 英语硕士课程 has focus areas in 创意写作; 儿童及青年研究; 写作、修辞和语言; and 文学. 这使得学生可以根据有利于他们的教育和职业目标的主题定制课程。 
 
“She had also mentioned that the specificity of the rhetoric and language route that 太阳城娱乐官网 offered made her resume look better when she had applied for a community college job,” Woodcock continued about the anonymous Facebook reviewer. “They really liked that it wasn't just a master's in English, but that it was in rhetoric and comp. She did an excellent job selling 太阳城娱乐官网!” 
 
After seeing the post, Woodcock did some additional research via the 太阳城娱乐官网网站.  
 
“She didn't even talk price! After that I started looking at prices and I was like, ‘Wow, 太阳城娱乐官网 is actually a pretty affordable school.’ To me, it was you can get a master's in English, and it didn't have to be literature, apparently that the professors were awesome, and that it would boost my resume,” Woodcock said.  
 
Those three reasons are what lead Woodcock to apply for 太阳城娱乐官网’s online English M.A. with an emphasis in rhetoric, composition, and language.  
 
As for Woodcock’s hatred for online courses, she now has a new mindset regarding online education. 
 
“Being abroad and knowing that my time zone was going to be an issue, I never expected to be able to meet with a professor,” Woodcock said. “It's a really important step to actually meet with students to talk about their papers and to make sure that everything's going on track. I was really impressed with the relationships and the actual interaction with the professors.”

伍德科克说，除了与近6000英里外的教授建立了深厚的联系之外，她所上的课程确实影响了她和她的课堂。 
 
“I ended up taking a unit of the inquiry that I created in her class, and I applied it to my students the following fall,” Woodcock said about a course she took with Dr. Janet Graham. “I felt like I was actually improving in my skills, and I was learning something new. The master’s program didn’t feel like just a piece of paper that was going to get me a raise." 
 
On the eve of graduating, Woodcock still isn’t sure who made the post that led to her earning her master’s, but she would love to find her someday to thank her: “I don't think I would have ever picked the University of Nebraska at Kearney. I need to find her name because she clearly really shaped this decision!” 
 
Many online 太阳城娱乐官网 graduates are also in Woodcock’s situation of not being able to physically attend 太阳城娱乐官网’s spring 2023 commencement due to distance or other factors. 太阳城娱乐官网研究生学习和学术推广了解这一点，并直播整个毕业典礼，让所有学生都有机会参与和庆祝他们的毕业，无论他们在世界的任何地方。