{"id":4138,"date":"2018-12-04T12:33:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T17:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=4138"},"modified":"2019-12-18T13:21:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T18:21:57","slug":"a-career-path-that-began-with-a-question-what-are-the-classes-you-really-want-to-take","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2018\/12\/04\/a-career-path-that-began-with-a-question-what-are-the-classes-you-really-want-to-take\/","title":{"rendered":"A career path that began with a question: What are the classes you really want to take?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Elizabeth Beachy Hansen ’99 outside the reThink Group headquarters in Cumming, Georgia.<\/p><\/div>\n

JAY B. LANDIS<\/strong> and his checkerboard-wrinkled forehead: That\u2019s basically what started Elizabeth Beachy Hansen ’99<\/strong>
\non her career path. As a first-year student, she had biotech and science research leanings, some theater experience, a passion for playing marimba, and no declared major.<\/p>\n

Landis was the faculty advisor for such people.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe called me and said, \u2018Well, What are the classes that you really want to take?\u2019\u201d she remembered recently. \u201cThen he started telling me about all the things he was teaching, and so I ended up as an English major.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hansen loved not only Landis\u2019s teaching but also the intense, collaborative process of theater, and the campus where she still feels at home.<\/p>\n

So much has followed: a first playwriting gig (Jordan\u2019s Stormy Banks<\/em> for the Valley Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg); an MFA from Regent University; her husband Dave, whom she met at a month-long Act One workshop in Chicago, various writing gigs that led to new writing gigs; and now, for about eight years, a reThink Group position in suburban Atlanta \u2013 oh, and two children, now nearly two and four years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely been a different world, the last few years,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of what we\u2019re doing right now is figuring out how do we continue to do this stuff we\u2019re passionate about, around kids. It\u2019s been a good challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hansen is a script writer and story developer for reThink Group, which produces curricula and companion resources in a wide variety of formats for churches and parents. It calls its philosophy and strategy \u201cOrange,\u201d to represent how the joining of two forces \u2013 parents and church leaders \u2013 \u201cwill have exponentially more influence than either entity alone,\u201d its website says. She\u2019s seen her own kids connect with the resources at their church.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She also works with her husband Dave, a \u201cwhole-package\u201d filmmaker, in their Arclight Studios, a career field she says is ironic for her: she grew up without television. Instead, \u201cwe had books. We had so many books.\u201d She remembers a summer her mom took limiting measures because her little sister \u2013 now language and literature Professor Kirsten Beachy ’02<\/strong> \u2013 was reading so much.<\/p>\n

Collaborating with a spouse can be kind of like marriage therapy, she said. \u201cAnytime you work together on a creative project like that, it brings out the best and the worst. We\u2019ve learned how we work together as a team\u201d \u2013 critiquing each other\u2019s work included. That\u2019s ultimately good for the art, since what emerges as a first draft is \u201creally like a third or fourth draft,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Even though the Hansens work as Christians, theirs is not \u201cChristian art\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s art.<\/p>\n

\u201cStories are beautiful and wonderful and dangerous in that they carry a message,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s a powerful thing.\u201d\u00a0 While some might use art to spoonfeed a message to audiences, Hansen\u2019s definition of a Christian story is more rooted in, well, story<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cA Christian story would be a story that\u2019s really well told, where somebody changes for better or for worse,\u201d she said, \u201cand because of something that we see in their story, we then start asking questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questions that, perhaps along with forehead wrinkles, can even start a professional journey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JAY B. LANDIS and his checkerboard-wrinkled forehead: That\u2019s basically what started Elizabeth Beachy Hansen ’99 on her career path. As a first-year student, she had biotech and science research leanings, some theater experience, a passion for playing marimba, and no declared major. Landis was the faculty advisor for such people. \u201cHe called me and said, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":4140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-winter-2018-19","category-magazine","issues-fall-winter-2018-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4138"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4143,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions\/4143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}