Hi all,
It’s been a while! As the year draws to a close, many of the publications that I’ve been working on / are featured in are starting to be released. Sharing my written words with the campus has been one of the most valuable parts of my experience at Holy Cross.
Although I wrote some articles in the Spire during the beginning of my junior year, it was on an on-off basis; I wasn’t considered a full-time contributor. Considering that I was head of my high school newspaper, I thought I ought to be more involved. Over the summer, as I was about to come back from abroad, I decided to apply for one of the open editor positions, for the Features section. As opposed to overall news, the section focuses on the going-ons around campus. I thought that this section would be a great way in which to learn more about Holy Cross. And it was! Throughout the year, I got to interview students, professors, alums, and administrators about the new College website design, biology research in Puerto Rico, the Academic Conference back in April, the Washington program, and more. You can read some of them here! I loved getting to know campus community members better through my interviews, and to befriend students from all grades as an editor. It was great to serve in a leadership role, and it definitely improved my writing skills.
I also served in editorial roles on the Purple, Holy Cross’ literary magazine, and the Criterion, the English Department’s academic journal. For the Purple, although I was an associate editor, I was able to use the interviewing skills I’d honed for the newspaper to help out. We interviewed the college provost, an HC alum and previous editor of the Purple, over two sessions. Some of my friends had their creative work published in the Purple as well, and that was nice to have our work in print together.
For the Criterion, I was one of the three co-editors-in chief. We ran a team of editors, communicated with the authors for edits, and did formatting and layout to create an entire journal from Google Docs. We then uploaded the journal and its contents on Crossworks, Holy Cross’ digital repository for student work. People from all over the world can see the essays! It was genuinely an honor to share some incredible essays to the world–literally! You can check the issue out here!
Lastly, I contributed an essay to the Holy Cross classics journal, Parnasuss. It was a fulfilling experience to work with student editors, as opposed to being the editor, for a change, and they had some great editing suggestions for me. I got a paper copy, but that will also be on Crossworks soon. I can’t wait to see it online, and get the diagnostics of where my work is downloaded worldwide!
Now that classes are coming to a close, we have final exams, and then Senior Week, and then graduation! I think I’ll make one more post capturing all that. See you then!
