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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 11, 2005 Quest for a degree, sometimes circuitous, comes to an end By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings Graduating senior Wind Woods , president of the SOU student body, will continue his playwriting studies at Arizona State University. Submitted photo Wind Woods always knew he wanted to tell stories, but it took the 26-year-old a bit longer to learn higher education would be the path to his dreams. Woods, the Southern Oregon University student body president, graduates Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in English and writing. He is a McNair Scholar and a past president of the Black Student Union who won the SOU Diversity Scholarship while at the university. Woods helped organize the Rock the Vote concert and the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration this year. He was turned down the first time he applied to SOU. Woods went to film school at the Art Academy of San Francisco after graduating from Ashland High in 1998. A year later, he realized he wanted the foundation of an undergraduate degree before specializing and returned to Ashland. His performance in high school kept him out of the university, so Woods spent 1 1/2 years at Rogue Community College and in the dual-enrollment program with SOU. In 2001, Woods came to SOU as a theater major. A year later he changed his focus to creative writing, where he could purse his playwriting passion. Woods played Reuben Mercer, the boy next door to the boarding house in the 1993 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” Through the role, Woods met Wilson and learned that people could write plays for a living. “That’s why I started playwriting,” Woods said. A dozen years later, he has taken the lone playwriting class at SOU — which is offered every other year — twice. In the class, Woods wrote a 15-page play for his senior capstone project and copyrighted the work. “I don’t think it will ever be finished,” Woods said. “It’s finished, as in I let people see it.” The play explores the relationship between a father diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and his son. The father owns a barbershop and wants his son to take over the business, but his son, a trumpet player, has dreams of moving to New York City to perform. Woods entered the play in a pair of playwrighting competitions in New York this spring. One competition rejected his work two days after he submitted it, but Woods is still waiting to hear from the second. He’s hopeful because the play was strong enough to earn him acceptance to the master’s of fine arts in playwriting program at Arizona State University this fall. He will teach part time at ASU as part of his master’s program and would eventually like to earn a doctorate and become a professor to inspire students the way instructors at SOU have touched his life. “I always say this, but I really think we have some incredible professors in many departments,” Woods said. “There’s just a vibe here, a real intimate vibe where you really feel like the people care about the students’ education.” Staff writer Jennifer Squires can be reached at 482-3456 x 3019 or [email protected]. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams