Alex de Wild, the new writer in the Office of External Relations, grew up in a small village in the southeast of England, a couple of hours north of London by train or car. “We’re talking post office, pub, primary school, park,” he says. “That’s about it.”
There, he and his friends could typically be found at the “rec,” which is how they referred to the local recreational park.
“Every night after school and on weekends, we’d be there either playing tennis or kicking a ball around, returning home only when it got dark to heat up the dinner we’d missed,” he says. “Or we’d go to the nearby petrol station — or gas station as you’d say here — to buy Rustlers microwavable burgers,” he adds.
They were also partial to some combat activities. “There was an abandoned church in the village where we’d stage boxing matches,” he says. “If you weren’t in the ‘ring,’ which was a patch of grass where the pews presumably once used to be, you’d be spectating from the hollowed-out window frames.”
At UM-Dearborn, de Wild will be covering the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the College of Education, Health and Human Services, along with general campus news, for the twice-weekly Reporter. Outside work, he aims for his time to be a little less structured, similar to how it was during childhood. “I really value open-ended time spent with friends and family,” he says. “It’s something I think many of us were great at as kids, but which we’re less great at in adulthood.”
A change of course
Before becoming a writer, de Wild worked as a lawyer in London. Leaving the legal profession wasn’t an easy decision. “At the time, it was all I’d ever known and, without wanting to sound melodramatic, it felt like giving up a part of my identity,” he recalls.
He decided, somewhat to the surprise of friends, family and colleagues, to return to university to study literature — a long-held ambition of his, but one he didn’t think he’d ever actually realize.
“It kind of felt like that ship had sailed, so to speak,” he says. “And what’s more I loved the law.” Ultimately though he decided to go for it, despite the uncertainties.
If he’s learned anything, it’s to embrace the fact that there are always trade-offs and opportunity costs in life. “I used to worry about that — about the counterfactual, as a lawyer might say,” he observes.
After finishing his degree and falling in love with an American, de Wild moved to the U.S., where he has been carving out a second career as a writer. But while he may have switched out briefs for stories, he says they’re not so different.
“Writing legal submissions is actually a lot like writing stories, even if the final product isn’t quite the same,” he says. “There’s an initial fact-gathering stage involving interviews and research, followed by the process of crafting the findings into a compelling, engaging narrative.”
He considers himself an extrovert and says that interacting with people helps him to think things through. “I’m a very social person,” he says. “I derive a lot of energy from talking with people, and I tend to process things best in that way."
De Wild also relishes the variety in journalism, which he finds invigorating as well as educational. “It affords me the chance to meet a wide and diverse range of people,” he says. “What they have in common is fascinating stories. From one week to the next, it’s a new subject, a new project, a new perspective.”
De Wild, whose position is part-time, also freelances. He’s written pieces on everything from the difficulty of making it into the NFL to a campaign for the release of an asylum seeker detained by ICE for the Ann Arbor Observer. He also writes profiles and articles for the Intuitive Foundation’s SELF program, which empowers health care workers in low- and middle-income countries through a novel approach to surgical and clinical skills training.
The joys that come with learning and meeting new people are one reason he’s looking forward to covering the university. “Already, I’ve discovered that there’s so much going on, and so many inspiring and fascinating people in this tight-knit community,” he says. “Right now for example I’m working on a piece about a group of biomedical engineers who are doing research on the use of nanoparticles to treat strokes.”
Embracing a new culture
De Wild admits that living in the U.S., where he’s been since last summer, brings some challenges.
“I’ve certainly experienced my share of culture shock,” he says. “Sometimes the fact we have a common language obscures significant differences between our cultures, I think.” He gives humor as an example. “It goes beyond punchlines,” he says. “It goes to something deeper to do with how we think of ourselves and how we relate to one another.”
On the other hand, there are many things about the U.S. that have come not as a shock but as a delight. “I appreciate the diverse and often vast terrain of the U.S.,” he says. “I’ve had the good fortune to visit a lot of places here, from Yellowstone, where I saw grizzlies and bison this summer, to Maine and Vermont, where I skied for the first time in my life a few years ago.”
He’s also taken a liking to football — the American kind, that is. “I’m an irredeemable follower of sports,” he says. “Growing up, I’d regularly go to games at Portman Road. That’s the home ground of my football — or perhaps I should say soccer — team. But I’d never been into American sports until recently. Now I’ve come to appreciate football. While I’m not a fan of all the commercials and pageantry, the game itself can be engrossing. I’ve watched a few Michigan games at the Big House in Ann Arbor, which were a lot of fun.”
He says he’s now looking forward to going to some ice hockey games at UM-Dearborn, even if the start of the hockey season signals cold weather on the way.
Archival photo courtesy of Alex de Wild.
