Gretchen Flaherty plunked herself down in the Twin Ports in 2005 and decided this was the best place ever to call home. True to her corn-fed roots, Gretchen received her undergraduate degree from Iowa State University and spent three years teaching high school English in her hometown of Des Moines before deciding the actual middle of the Midwest was just too darn hot. She trekked north to an Eskimo village and stayed there for a year after being hired as the entire English department for Tukurngailnguq school in Stebbins, AK. Wanting a nice middle climate between Iowa and Alaska, Gretchen then found herself teaching Spanish for a few years in southern Wisconsin. However, all the cows in dairyland reminded her too much of the sweltering Iowa heat, and she knew a move slightly further north would cool her jets. Turns out, Gretchen’s ‘just right place’ is Duluth, Minnesota, where she received her Master’s in English from UMD and has been teaching at Lake Superior College since 2008. An additional perk to the perfect Duluth weather is the fact that Gretchen loves teaching at LSC more than any other place she’s been. In Gretchen’s classes, she encourages her students to write essays for quality instead of quantity, and also requires that everyone use the word ‘vernacular’ at least once in conversation during the course of the semester.