SOUTH BELOIT — When Tessa Oberg applied for the famed Fulbright grant, she had high hopes of using it to study the intricacies of British literature.

Her efforts — she calls it being “doggedly determined” — are being rewarded with a trip to England next month and the chance to study literature at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. There, she'll complete a one-year master's degree program in modernist literature and culture.

Oberg also hopes her studies will help her with an ongoing fiction story she is writing. At present, the work is a pair of award-winning short stories, but Oberg hopes to one day turn it into a novel.

Oberg began to see writing as more than a pastime and continued to study the field during high school. She went on to the University of Illinois, where she studied English literature and rhetoric, graduating in 2005.

Eventually, she wants to become a university-level literature teacher. There, she would be able to help others understand that studying literature is a science of sorts.

Oberg hopes her next stop will be the University of Cornell in New York, where she wants to earn a Ph.D. in literature and Master of Fine Arts in narrative. She recently was awarded the Jake Kent Cooke Scholarship, which gives her $50,000 a year for up to five years to pay for grad school.

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