Patrick Eichholz, BA, 2006
Patrick Eichholz, BA, English, 2006, is an assistant professor of English at Virginia
Military Institute. After graduating, he worked for five years as a firefighter and
paramedic in Corsicana, Texas where his patient care reports were widely celebrated
for their clarity and erudition. Between calls, Patrick would reread his favorite
books from UD. To avoid having his reading so frequently interrupted, Patrick left
the fire service in 2012 to pursue a doctorate degree in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Returning
to graduate school six years after graduation would not have been possible without
the extended support of former UD professors and friends. Scott Crider coached Patrick
through the admissions process, Greg Roper and Bill Frank wrote recommendation letters,
and Meghan Wadle smuggled books out of the SMU library to help with his writing sample. In
2018, Patrick received a PhD in English and Comparative Literature and moved to Lexington,
Virginia, where he now teaches out of the same dog-eared copies of Woolf, Eliot, and
Nabokov that he started reading back in Irving.
