Graduation season is here and so we sat down with our dear friend Lizzy and her Guide Dog, Eva, to chat about how they are feeling about the closing of this chapter and the opening of their next.
But first, a little about Lizzy and Eva! The two were matched via the Guide Dog Foundation and met on Valentine’s Day 2020. Eva was so talented that she went into formal training quite young, so she graduated younger than most service dogs at just 18 months!
Both Lizzy and Eva have been involved in advocacy for the service dog and blind community. They have attended advocacy appointments at the Department of Transportation and individual legislators on both the state and national level. They were also featured in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal advocating for better laws relating to service dogs on airplanes.
Be sure to check out Eva's Instagram page @Eva_gdf_
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What was your favorite part of college?
- Lizzy: I think I like how everything is so community-oriented. It is so easy to meet up with friends for a meal or to just hang out because the spaces for that are built into the school. I also really loved studying abroad in London because it was the first time I got to leave the U.S. for longer than a week or two and it was an incredible once-in-a-lifetime experience. The class that I did was Theatre in London so we got the chance to see over 20 shows in London over a month, and head up and see Stratford upon Avon.
- Eva: Eva likes the classes in our religion department because they tend to be smaller and the rooms make it easier to take a good long nap.
What is the thing you will miss most about college?
- Lizzy: I will miss my friends and professors. I have learned so much from them and their support of me has been invaluable to my growth as a person. I will also miss Minnesota, a state I happened into but have really learned to love over these last few years. However, I am attending graduate school in Chicago so the academics will not end.
- Eva: Eva is going to miss her constant access to pets and affection from everyone around her, but especially my roommate who enjoys feeding Eva frozen blueberries in the morning and giving her head scratches.
What was your favorite class?
- Lizzy: My favorite class is probably one of the hardest questions ever. I really enjoy any class where I get to discuss and watch movies, so I have taken a class about God in the Movies and how movies depict biblical stories which was a blast. I also took a class called Shakespeare in Film where we read Shakespeare and watched international films adapting those texts which was a ton of fun.
- Eva: Eva really liked my political philosophy class (do not ask me why) but she got so excited whenever we went into that classroom) although I did love that class it was a weird choice and quirk of hers.
What are you most excited about?
- Lizzy: Next year we are moving to Chicago for grad school and I am excited to get to experience a whole new city with Eva and some of my friends who are moving to Chicago as well. I think it will be a challenge but it will be nice to be able to walk to any food I want and have a kitchen and all of those adult things.
- Eva: Eva is excited to have a whole new group of people to win over with her cuteness and charm. Eva grew up on a college campus so she doesn’t really know a world without going to class and seeing her favorite people all the time.
What are you most proud of about all that you accomplished?
- Lizzy: I recently had to turn in a REALLY long distinction paper (8,000 words) that I had been working on for over a year about early modern female poets and their relationship with sacred texts. It’s a mouthful but at this point in my life it is my biggest project and finishing it this semester felt SO good.
- Eva: Eva has mastered the art of taking a nap everywhere and so she is proud of the amount of odd places she has taken a nap.