The Phoenix Rises Again...and Again

By Sarah Stevenson

If you're a prospective student on the lookout for online schools, you might have noticed the University of Phoenix's recent ad campaign—their "I am a Phoenix" series of advertisements features the stories of individual students for whom returning to school constituted a brand-new start. Like the mythical bird that burst into flames and then rose again from the ashes, a new degree and career can feel like a rebirth.

However, the creature from mythology and the educational institution are not the only well-known phoenixes—the symbol itself has had a constant presence everywhere from literature and music to geography, science and exploration. Some of the more common phoenixes you may be familiar with include the capital of Arizona, the Marvel comics character, the recent NASA Mars mission and the actor Joaquin Phoenix.

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Did you know, though, that the popular web browser Mozilla Firefox used to be called Phoenix? Or that numerous maritime vessels, now and throughout history, have been dubbed Phoenix? MapQuest lists no fewer than ten cities or towns with the name, including the one in Arizona. In the entertainment world, there's the 1998 movie Phoenix with Ray Liotta and Anjelica Huston as well as a handful of periodicals. Music fans could try listening to the album by Asia, or if you don't like Asia, there's always Grand Funk Railroad or Dan Fogelberg, or several other albums entitled Phoenix by lesser-known bands. The Phoenix has been a team mascot, a videogame, several models of cars, a few corporate entities, and even a rollercoaster.

If your goal is online education, though, and you decide to include the "University of Phoenix online" in your research, don't forget to spell it correctly—it's a little tricky, and a lot of searchers transpose the vowels and type in "University of Pheonix online" instead. Of course, there are those who deliberately spell it "phenix" and "fenix"—but that's another story. The important thing to remember is that when all those web search results pop up for "phoenix," just be sure to click on the right one!

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