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Spreading the Written Word
My copy of Parnassus!

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. 

Published authors!

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!
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Getting Published with Holy Cross’ Help

Hello again!

I hope that everyone had a nice, restful break back home, and are adjusting well with their new schedules. My classes all seem like they will be interesting, so I’m excited about taking those. While it’s a lot of fun being a senior, however, there’s definitely a bittersweet aspect to it.

Fortunately, the semester began with some great news. On the last day of January, an essay I wrote junior year was published in the newest volume of a peer-reviewed literary journal for undergraduate scholarship. You can read it online here! It’s been a long process: I sent the essay in for consideration mid-January 2023, before I went abroad, and I spent the better part of the year working with the journal team editing the essay. For this blog post, I’d like to focus on the various ways in which members of the Holy Cross community helped me along the way.

The original assignment’s parameters were any topic we wanted to write about, as long as we received approval from the professor before writing it. As an English major who is also interested in creative writing, I appreciated the opportunity to be creative while still being analytical and citing academic sources. It was one of my best experiences writing a paper, but I never considered having it be published somewhere. I figured, if it’s for class, then it’s for class. However, my teacher gave me great feedback, and recommended I find a student journal to send it to, which was immediately an exciting prospect for me.

After finals, I remained at home until mid-February before I left for my semester abroad. Even though I wasn’t on campus, I was still able to be in contact with several members of the English Department and ask them advice on which publications I should take my essay to. I brought my search up at the end of a meeting on something entirely unrelated with one of the professors, and she was kind enough not only to voluntarily read my essay, but to send me potential journals over the following few days. I ended up submitting it to one of the journals she recommended! That professor is no longer at Holy Cross, but I still remember the generosity and help she gave me, even though I was never in one of her classes.

Even when I went abroad, I was still able to receive assistance from Holy Cross. I booked a virtual appointment with one of the Writing Workshop assistants, which you can learn more about here! I had done such appointments a couple times previously, but obviously never from a sixteen-hour time difference. Although I had to wake up for an 8:30am video call, it was quite worth it. The consultant was a student who had been in my class, so he had an intimate awareness of the prompt and the material, and he made several valuable suggestions. I also used a similar writer’s consultant service at my university abroad, and that ended up being extremely helpful, too.

Getting published with an undergraduate journal was an amazing opportunity and I learned a lot from the experience. It really polished my writing and editing skills, as well as my collaborative skills receiving feedback and communicating with a team of people I never actually met. In terms of Holy Cross, it allowed me to realize how dedicated the Holy Cross faculty and students are in helping us find and pursue new opportunities. The help of several people and services on the Hill were invaluable to getting this piece published.

My experience working with the undergrad journal staff inspired me to become involved with the literary publications on campus in my final year at Holy Cross. This semester, I will be serving as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Criterion literary journal; Chief Features Editor of the Spire student newspaper; and Associate Editor for the Purple poetry magazine. It’s definitely a lot on my plate, but I can’t wait to get to work on all of them.

Until next time!