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A Creative Writer Since Freshman Year

Duke employee Jennifer Madriaga has published fiction since her Duke undergrad days

Jennifer Madriaga's Conference and Event Services office in the Bryan Center is full of drawings by her 5-year-old son. Photo by April Dudash
Jennifer Madriaga's Conference and Event Services office in the Bryan Center is full of drawings by her 5-year-old son. Photo by April Dudash

Name: Jennifer Madriaga    Position: Assistant manager, Conference and Event Services, Duke University Center Activities and Events (UCAE)Years at Duke: 2 What I do at Duke: We concentrate on summer sessions. We have about 80 summer programs that we coordinate logistics for, so basically 10,000 participants come to campus every summer. That can range from academic programs like TIP to arts programs like American Dance Festival or sports camps. We help run Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s basketball camp, which is the largest sports camp. We are open seven days a week during the summer. During the rest of the year, we do things mostly related to registrations. For example, we create the registration websites for Family Weekend, for Homecoming, for undergraduate reunions.My first ever job: Working at Dairy Queen. That was in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and that lasted two months because there were mice living in the ice cream cone machine. My dream job: I’m a writer, actually. I’m published in various journals. I haven’t done a full-length work. I’m a single mom, so that makes it kind of hard, too, because I don’t have very much time. I write fiction and poetry and I’ve also written creative nonfiction. When I was at Duke for my undergrad, I received a scholarship for creative writing here. The best advice I ever received: “Be in total acceptance.” Which is basically the same as, “Go with the flow.” Honestly, in this job, it’s good advice because something will always go wrong. Part of it is you just have to move through it and you’ll get through to the other side. What I love about Duke: When I was here as a student, I was like, I don’t ever want to leave, but I never envisioned I’d be here 23 years later working back at the university. You meet some very interesting, eclectic people here. Something most people don’t know about me: I know how to read oracle cards. Someone gave me a deck for my birthday, so I have a whole collection of them that I’ll use at parties. My favorite is doing animal spirit cards. An interesting/memorable day at work for me: Meeting Rob Lowe during Family Weekend last year. I had a huge crush on Rob Lowe as a kid. I’m in my 40’s, so when you see the object of your crush, who was on a poster in your room, in person, of course I had to stay professional and not start screaming. A pet peeve: Tardiness. The back story behind that is that my family is of Filipino descent and they’re on island time. If they say they’re going to be there at 4, it may be between 6 and 8 that they arrive. So growing up, I’d be the last kid picked up from school. A unique thing in my office: A lot of this artwork from my kid (5 years old). He’s very prolific as an artist. Picasso said that to be an artist, you should be like a child.