Linda Sue Kush Takes on Life

by Stephen Maxon

Linda Sue Kush

Linda Sue Kush, 50, was recently awarded the Harvard Extension School Aurelio Prize, which recognizes the academic achievement and character of an undergraduate over 50. She blew the cash portion of the prize on a top-of-the-line bass recorder and headed to a cabin in Maine. “After working two jobs and going to school for the past ten years, I thought it was time I took a summer off,” Kush says.

During her sojourn, Kush easily entertained herself with a flurry of activities and hobbies; she kayaked, hiked, played music—a variety of flutes and guitar—worked on a family genealogy, and spent time with her partner, Spencer Morrow.

A diverse and energetic lifestyle typifies Kush. She excelled at the Extension School while juggling multiple jobs and myriad hobbies, thriving and outpacing her younger classmates. June Erlick, one of Kush’s former instructors, sees Kush’s experience as an asset. “She handles being an outsider, being older than the other students, as an advantage: it makes her an insider because she accepts her role,” she says. “Linda was always helping to mentor other students.”

Kush began taking Extension School courses while working at Harvard Printing and Publication Services as a senior estimator and 20 years after starting her undergraduate coursework as a music major at Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1972. “I [had] quickly realized that being the best flute player in Fremont, Nebraska, does not mean a whole heck of a lot,” she says.

Bolstered by her academic success at the Extension School—cum laude with the fourth highest GPA: 3.82—and a slew of articles published in the Boston Globe, Kush is using her experience and humanities degree as a catalyst for a career change to journalism.

Kush excelled at the Extension School by choosing courses that both interested her and were relevant to other parts of her life. For example, while cataloging her family’s ancestry in her spare time, Kush used skills from her German class to translate correspondence with distant relatives in Germany. “I’d write them in English, and they’d respond in German. It was great!” she says.

Kush found a way to utilize her experience in her courses, too. While taking a journalism class, she used cold-calling skills learned from a previous telemarketing job. “When I called up an editor at the Globe, I was thinking that I had just made their day by sending in my piece,” Kush explains, “just like those people at home eating dinner when I called about concert tickets.”

Erlick says, “Linda Kush is one of the most determined people I know, and this quality makes her a good journalist.”

After a summer of playing Renaissance music on the recorder and working on her golf swing, Kush returned to journalism this fall.