Undergraduate Alumni

Lucy Beeching

After graduating from the UGA Comparative Lit Department in 2013, Lucy attended the New York University Summer Publishing Institute. Starting as an apprentice, she then worked as a copywriter for several advertising agencies in NYC. She now lives in Los Angeles, copywriting for the marketing department of GoodRx.

Upon graduating, I moved to Saigon and taught English for 2 years. While teaching English, I taught myself to code and became a full stack engineer. Over the past 7 years, I worked on the crypto currency Cardano and then most recently at Quizlet. Now, I’m pursuing an LPC to become a therapist with a focus on helping addicts. I’m also in the process of starting a mushroom farm with the intent to make biodegradable packing materials, plastics, and use mushrooms to clean up environmental pollutants. 

I’m also currently a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and actively compete here in Austin, TX, where I reside.

After graduating, I went on to work as a reporter for Voice of America News, where I covered issues related to the People's Republic of China's interference in higher education in the United States. This led to my next career position as a Junior Pentagon Correspondent with Kyodo News. I also became a campaign trail reporter and followed then-candidate Joe Biden as he sought nomination. CMLT was a superior major to select over the more traditional Journalism major because I was viewed as having the necessary background knowledge and nuanced approach that would be successful in an international news agency. My CMLT major made me stand out in the interview process because it was viewed as a demonstration of good writing and critical thinking skills.

The coronavirus pandemic led me to change career paths, and now I am a third-year law student at Emory University School of Law where I am in the top 20% of my class and am serving as a teaching assistant for corporate law. Upon graduation, I will be clerking for a federal judge in Texas. As a law clerk, my time will be focused on drafting judicial opinions which require rigorous research, detail-oriented proofreading, and creativity when approaching novel issues of law. The CMLT major undoubtably prepared me for this career, much more than a political science or history major could have, because the CMLT major goes to the core of what makes a lawyer successful: thoughtful writing, balanced perspectives, and writing machines!

After graduating with a degree from our Comparative Literature department, I continued on to earn a MA in Communication Studies, where I was able to pair the interdisciplinary training I received with graduate-level work in rhetoric. Now, as an admissions recruiter with UGA's Office of Undergraduate Admissions, I continue to borrow from my intercultural and interdisciplinary roots in academia through recruiting and educating diverse prospective students on our institution's many resources. My work with our access and inclusion team is predicated on being cognizant of cultural distinctions and the overlapping nature of different disciplines. Comparative literature undoubtedly prepared me for a career in higher education by broadening my perspectives on the experiences of those in disparate communities, while also encouraging underrepresented students to call UGA home.

After graduating, I completed my MEd at UGA and went on to work at Bear Hollow Zoo in Athens, which is home to native, non-releaseable wildlife as the Program Specialist! I am in charge of education at the zoo, which entails ambassador animal training, school group programs, special events, and summer camps! My degree in CMLT helped me become a better interpreter in environmental education and gave me a strong foundation in working with a variety of people globally in animal training.

Comparative Literature opened up an entire world for me with my research, my thought process and especially my critical thinking. The way I view adaptations, translations, languages and all means of expressing a story and its message have never been the same. Every time I read or write, watch a film, listen to a song revived over time, I am always reminded that I see things quite differently, due to the education I received here in the Comparative Literature Department at The University of Georgia.

After graduating in 2015, I began working for Winding Creek Kennels, Inc. in their marketing division, helping with advertisement on their website and various social media platforms, research and customer service. After six years, I decided to change things up and go back to my alma mater. Because I wanted to get my foot in the door, I was happy to apply for whatever was needed, and an Operations Specialist position opened up in the Accounts Payable Department. Again, my position requires me to do immense research, write & calling clients of the University and various vendors that we use to make the many purchases from. I also have an evening job in marketing and website design called Phantom Eye Design, where I work with various forms of media, research and coming up with new ways to advertisement on social media platforms and websites. The company itself creates websites, teaches clients how to advertise to the best of their ability and helps to promote whatever the clients are trying to sell. I’ve learned quite a lot there.

I know you may be asking how all this fits with my degree. People are complicated beings. So naturally communicating with them is easier said than done and you have to go about using different platforms to reach different people. I studied film, philosophy, politics, gender, television and more. To become more evolved, you have to be able to change, to bend, and to adapt to different perspectives and go from there.

My experience here at the university was a very positive one and it was everything I had hoped for. I had my daughter shortly after graduating, so going back to school right away wasn’t quite in the cards for me at the time. I do plan on going back to school in the very near future to further my education and receive my master's degree in literature so I may learn more and share my knowledge with others.