English At 50 | University of Waterloo

Mr. Viktor Haag (BA 1992) chose to attend the University of Waterloo because he practically grew up on the campus (his mother was a faculty member) and because he was attracted to the Applied Studies program offered by UW's Arts faculty. He later chose to concentrate his studies on English Literature because he enjoyed those courses the most. While pursuing his degree, he had notions about becoming a teacher, but ended up not pursuing that career path.

Viktor initially enrolled as a co-op student in the English Honours program, but when he secured a recurring job with the Computer Science department as a course tutor he switched to full-time employment and part-time study streams. During the last eighteen months of his BA, he worked almost full-time hours at his tutoring job and studied part-time to complete his degree.

"One of the key things that I discovered in my time at university was a more detailed and rounded picture about my strengths and interests, what I, as a person, liked and didn't like. The English degree gave me a robust foundation for building myself an interesting career; one where I'm always learning and collaborating around new things and new ideas."

Upon graduating, Viktor had the option to continue on with graduate school, attend teacher's college, or enter the private sector. He was offered a job in the high-tech industry, working for a local software company as a technical writer and decided to try that as a change from academia. He enjoyed the work and has continued in the industry, working for a variety of high-tech companies in the KW area ever since.

After a decade in the high-tech industry, Viktor decided to return to UW to pursue an MA with an interest in communities of discourse around collections of information. However, he found that he simply didn't have the time to devote to graduate studies while taking on more responsibilities at work and raising two children.

His favourite courses during his time at UW were a Shakespeare course taught by Dr. Ted McGee, and the graduate Literary Theory and Criticism curriculum course taught by Dr. Victoria Lamont.

Currently, Viktor works for Research In Motion Ltd. as a Senior Writer in their Handheld Software engineering division. On a day-to-day basis, only a portion of his workload directly involves writing; he also directs and reviews the work of his small writing team, and participates in the handheld software design process by collaborating on and reviewing the functional design for new BlackBerry software features.

Being part of the English Department gave Viktor a good set of thinking and communication skills that he uses to learn, research, and collaboratively solve problems. He has found that the value of a Liberal Arts education teaches people to think, learn, and communicate with others, and feels that private industry sees these as core, valuable skills found in the best employees.