She attended Boston University for one year and then transferred to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota and graduated "cum laude" with a degree in English. After graduating, she worked for a technology companies whose clients included United Health, The US Navy and Pillsbury to pay off her college loans right away to pursue a master's degree. While in the process of obtaining her master's degree in teaching from the University of St. Thomas she took a course on adolescent literature from playwright John Fenn. He liked a poem she wrote and took it home for his wife Jill Breckenridge to read. She loved it and is the person who encouraged Sun Yung Shin to continue writing poetry. After taking a liking to poetry she became the poetry editor of the campus literary magazine for Macalester College.