The story of an award-winning Dalhousie student
Catherine Charlton (photo contributed)
Catherine Charlton is not a scientist.
But that's what she signed up to be for four years at the University of King's College. She thought it was a good career choice.
Secretly, her interest was elsewhere.
"I always had my nose in a book when I was growing up,” she said. “I’d curl up in a chair on Saturdays with a book and that was a good day. Times seven."
Charlton thought her love of reading wouldn't generate a career. So, she signed up to study biology.
When the September following her high school graduation came around, off she went – an eager bookworm – into the world of science.
Having studied biology already, Charlton should have known that worms don't last very long in laboratories.
"I didn't like calculus," she said. With a growing smile, she paused. "I didn't like biology."
Charlton didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about science outside of class. Instead, she would go home and tell her mother all about her history and arts classes.
“It opened my eyes to a new way of looking at things,” she said.
Charlton rearranged her course schedule, moving a science lab to make space for history lectures. She started attending classes she wasn't enrolled in.
"It revealed to me what I hadn't recognized in myself," she said.
In second year, Charlton changed her major to history.
Some might think science-to-history is a big switch. But Charlton's family wasn't surprised, she said.
“They were like ‘we were wondering when you were going to do that.'"
Settling into the history department, Charlton wrote an essay about the mining town in Nova Scotia where her great grandfather once worked.
Charlton's essay about Springhill, Nova Scotia won the Modern Language Association's Student Essay Contest, earning a place on the association’s website as an example of excellent student writing.
"This might sound nerdy," she said. "The first explanatory footnote I ever wrote was in that paper, and I was excited about that."
Charlton graduated in 2021, winning her school's University Medal in History - an award granted to the graduating history student with the highest grade.
But graduation was bittersweet. Charlton wanted to keep learning about history.
She returned to the classroom the following year, to begin a master's degree.
In the fall of 2022, Charlton had her master's, her awards, but yet still a fear to face: the fear of whether she could get a job with her education.
Staff at McGill University quashed that fear when they hired her in October of 2022.
“I’m very happy where I’m at,” she said.
Lately, she tucks her nose into a book titled University Governance in Canada. She said it covers both bases: it's good knowledge for work, and it's a fun read.
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