Alumni at Nova: Amanda Piazza

 

Sometimes our graduate students like it so much at Villanova that they decide to stick around and work here, using the skills they’ve gained as students to further the mission of the university as employees. One such former student and current employee is Amanda Piazza, who earned her MA in English this past spring. Amanda is now working as an administrative assistant for the office of financial assistance, where she assists the director with special projects, supports students and parents, tracks the department’s budget, and more.  

Amanda noted that her English skills have proven useful in her new role. “At the moment, we’re getting a lot of very emotional parents and students who will call; learning the art of rhetoric, you kind of know what to say and what not to say. I have to phrase it in a way that says that we’re working on it and you’ll hear from us.” She also took a page from our department’s book, borrowing our idea of a regular departmental newsletter, which she herself now writes for the office of financial assistance.  

Amanda Piazza MA '22

Amanda gained a lot of work experience in her time at Villanova. “I used to work at the center for research and fellowships here on campus,” she said. “I helped students revise their personal statements for scholarships and Fulbright applications. We tried to get students to be as exact and specific as possible. Anything abstract, we had to ask them to elaborate on. There were also students who would write four pages for a one-page thing.” 

Amanda was a teaching assistant as well, helping out with Professor Brooke Hunter’s freshman literature of magic course in the fall of 2021. In part due to Professor Hunter’s going on maternity leave during the semester, Amanda got to do more than the typical teaching assistant, even taking over the class for two weeks. “That was awesome,” she said, “to connect as a teaching assistant for two weeks; I got to make a whole kind of plan for how to tackle the reading for that day. I tried to inspire them to think on their own, to bring to me what they thought was interesting or connections to things we had read before.” Amanda was surprised by how much knowledge some students were bringing to the course. “A lot of them know a lot about the occult… they knew a lot of things that were drawn from these texts; a lot of these medieval texts are brought up in media today,” she noted. 

In addition, Amanda was a research assistant with the department. “I got to work with Alice Dailey during my first year. I got to help her fact-check and copy-edit some of her book. I had to contact foundations for copyright permissions, the Royal Shakespeare Company… it was a cool experience. She gave me a box of all the books and essays she had used and asked me to check her citations… It was a long, arduous process, but it was super rewarding. I got put in the acknowledgements section (of Alice’s new book), which was really nice.”  

In her second year, Amanda worked with Professor Joseph Lennon, which allowed her to learn more about Irish studies, an area in which she was previously less experienced. “I learned a lot about some of the silver workings of Irish culture. I had to research Saint Patrick,” she added, noting that she had been asked to research whether there was any historically valid reason to consider him the patron saint of engineering (there isn’t, though arriving at that answer involved poring through Patrick’s confessio and letters, an interesting experience in and of itself). Amanda also was able to meet Emma Dabiri, the visiting Heimbold chair (“I got to write her bio blurb on the Heimbold website”). “I got a lot of really cool opportunities,” she said, “I never would have gotten had I not gone here.” 

Amanda noted that it is weird, in a good way, to transition from student to worker. “It’s weird, but I like it. Its like, I’m not learning things in a classroom; I’m learning things through real world experiences, rather than in a controlled space.” She enjoys having more time to read for pleasure, and is currently reading Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, by Natalie Haynes.  

Amanda continues to write in her spare time, on the comic book website cbr.com, and on her blog.