Staff Spotlight: Linda Booska

Linda Booska, the Department of Political Science’s academic coordinator, has worked in administrative roles for a long time and in many settings, from stockbroker offices and big legal firms to nonprofit agencies, but she has never lost sight of her first priority: raising her son.

Linda was born in Burlington, Vt., and grew up in South Burlington. She graduated from South Burlington High School in 1978. Right after high school, she went to work at a stockbroker office as a secretary.

Linda was only at the stockbroker office for a few months before going to work at the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC), a nonprofit agency that helps young Vermonters finance and navigate higher education. After three years at VSAC, Linda began working as a legal secretary at a big law firm in Burlington.

Linda worked as a legal secretary for 17 years in all, working at a couple of big firms for a while. Later, she worked at a smaller firm, where she served as office manager in addition to her duties as a legal secretary.

Then, in 1998, she came to work for the College in the position she currently holds. She has now been at the College for more than a decade.

Linda could not be happier about getting out of the legal business and coming to work at the College.

“It was the best decision I ever made,” she said.

Indeed, Linda described her experience in the legal field with a cringe, of sorts. Working around several attorneys made for a stressful work environment, to say the least, she said. Even worse, many of the attorneys didn’t exactly get along. Linda described scenes in which the attorneys would storm into each others’ offices, slam the door and engage in a thunderous argument complete with a healthy selection of expletives. And this was not an infrequent occurrence.

Not only did the lawyers think their fellow lawyers were doing everything wrong, they also micromanaged the secretaries, expecting them to be working fastidiously every moment of every day, with not a moment to spare.

As time went on, the considerable commute to Burlington also became straining — Linda lives in Bristol — especially with a young son just starting kindergarten.

The time had certainly come to move on.

Working at the College has allowed Linda to develop a close and open relationship with her only son, Jamie, who is an A-student at Mt. Abraham Union High School. Jamie will be attending Vermont Tech in Randolph next fall to study architecture and engineering. Linda is certainly going to miss Jamie while he’s away at school, but Randolph is close enough that Jamie will be home on weekends.

“That way I can do his laundry,” Linda said with a smile.

Aside from spending time with her son and helping him with his college arrangements, Linda also enjoys swimming, snowshoeing, gardening and walking her two dogs, Charlie and Mac, who each weigh over 100 pounds. Linda also has three cats: Smokey, Sox and Sammy.

Linda humbly tried to insist that she didn’t have any wisdom to pass down to students. After some encouraging, she said “I really don’t know what to say. Just keep your head on your shoulders. There’s a lot of bad stuff out there that you have to be careful of.”