KU News Release

Graduation stories: KU grad hopes to combine love of medicine, linguistics

Jennifer Garrison

LAWRENCE — She always dreamed of being a doctor but wound up with a career in linguistics. Now, after four years in the U.S. Army and two children, Jennifer Garrison is on her way to a career that marries both.

Garrison will earn a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from KU this month and will soon start a graduate course of study that she hopes will lead to a career as a speech-language pathologist.

After she graduated from high school, Garrison enlisted in the U.S. Army with hopes of becoming a medic. But the Army’s standard aptitude and battery test showed she might be a better fit as a linguist.

“I remember in high school I had a fairly easy time with the language classes I took,” she said. “But I didn’t connect that with a way I could make a living.”

Whether she realized it or not, her days of acing Spanish and Latin courses served her well. She scored highly on her Army language tests and immediately after basic training was started in the intensive Arabic language course, one of the most notoriously difficult language courses for native English speakers. She was stationed at Fort Meade, Md., the top destination for Army linguists.

“Only two of us from my platoon were selected to go there,” Garrison said. “A lot of people in my platoon were angry at us. That’s basically the premiere language spot.”

Through her work in Arabic, she was given a top-secret security clearance and went to work with the National Security Agency. Although she enjoyed her work translating Arabic for national security purposes, “working at the NSA was not what everybody makes it out to be,” Garrison said.

While at Fort Meade, Garrison met her future husband, Sean, a Kansas City native and satellite specialist. They decided they had gone as far as the Army could take them and came back to Kansas City, where Sean started his career as an electrical engineer. Shortly thereafter, Garrison gave birth to daughter Karina, the couple’s first child.

Her service in the Army behind her, Garrison wasn’t sure where her career path would lead. She took a few mathematics courses at a community college and studied for a time at the University of Missouri-Rolla before finding out about KU’s linguistics program through a Web search.

She enrolled at KU full time and shortly thereafter gave birth to the couple’s second child, Nathan. Now a full-time mother and student, her dreams of a career in medicine came back to her. Garrison decided to pursue a master’s degree in hopes of becoming a speech-language pathologist. She’ll walk down the hill this month before starting her graduate courses in the fall. Sean will also graduate with his master’s in electrical engineering.

Her service in the Army and time as a mother of two children under 4 and full-time student have prepared her for the challenges the work force will eventually throw her way.

“There a point at which I just have to stop,” Garrison said of her stressful workload. “Sometimes I have to stop and read something that doesn’t pertain to school or watch a show that I enjoy. When I’m doing homework and the kids are running around, my mom side always wins out over my student side.”

Garrison said her faith plays a large role in her life and has helped her through the hectic times.

“Patience is a virtue I have to work on,” she said with a laugh. “I know in the back of my head some day this will all settle down. I don’t think I’ll ever look back and regret it.”

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