On March 2, the English Department hosted its Annual Exhibition for the Cogan Fellowship. The fellowship was established in 2000 to honor Eleanor Cogan, who was 72 when she began her time at Dickinson in 1979. Over the course of her studies, she took 52 courses, 32 of them within the English Department. Her academic determination earned her an honorary Doctor of Letters during Dickinson’s 2003 Commencement and made her the fellowship’s namesake.
This year’s Cogan Fellow was Michael Meager ’00, a partner at the Carlyle Group, one of the largest Private Equity Firms in the world. His talk was titled: “Anything Can Happen Now that We’ve Slid Over this Bridge”: A Wall Street Piscaresque, which focused on the importance of storytelling and how this skill is present anywhere, even in fields far removed from English.
He began his talk by discussing what his main takeaways at Dickinson were, stating that choosing to be an English major, “was hard” but “one of the best choices” he’s ever made.
He justified this, saying that “even as someone currently in the finance industry, the most important skill I’ve learned was to tell a story.” It’s these “soft” skills that he described as being crucial to differentiating between people who are just “good” in their career and “excellent.”
However, during his early career, he had difficulty finding a job amid the financial crisis.
“When I left at first, I was lost,” he said. He described becoming a high school teacher and trying to write his own novel, but quickly realized that he had a different passion: finance.
It was with this realization that he was inspired to begin working at the Carlyle Group, which he attributed not just to technical ability, but also his ability to tell stories. Even at the firm today, he described his work as not purely numbers-driven, but centered around how well he can present ideas, frame investments and convince others. In that sense, storytelling isn’t limited to English; it exists everywhere.
His journey shows that the skills developed through studying English are not restrictive but instead transferable across any field. From struggling to find direction after graduation to becoming a partner at one of the largest private equity firms in the world, Meager’s experience reflects how these “soft” skills can shape long-term success.
So, whether a student is an English major or not, whether they are graduating this year or in a couple of years, the message is still the same. All students have to do, in the words of Meager himself, is to “go out and share your story.”
