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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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The Most Interesting Classes on the Hill

Hi everyone,

Today, Boston College History Professor Helen Cox Richardson visited campus to talk about the value of the humanities as part of a biannual lecture. In response, for this blog post, I want to showcase some of the interesting courses that Holy Cross has to offer. Because of its status as a liberal arts institution, Holy Cross offers a wide variety of classes, and you are really given the opportunity to explore– not just for filling general requirements, but also in the second half of your time as an undergraduate!

(Although as an English major, I find many of my literature classes appealing, I’ll work to not fixate on those as I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea).

A unique feature of Holy Cross’ curriculum is the Montserrat program. Two of your eight requirements during your freshman year are filled by this unique academic class, sorted by clusters and all largely distinct from one another. The program is designed so that you live in the same dorm as those in your class, so that way you’ll already have connections from the get-go. My Montserrat was unique in that it was split up into two “halves” taught by two different professors. I was in the “Natural World” cluster, and my two classes were called “Tropical Fictions” and “Fictions of the Future.” In the former, we learned about Latin American history and read / watched media with the goal of critiquing those that looked upon South America with a “tropical”, otherizing eye. In the latter, we read texts that were environmentally conscious and depicted dystopian futures where the health of our planet is in limbo. Although those classes were unfortunately on Zoom, I still feel a strong connection to them– I am still friends with other students from the class (one is my roommate!) and I have been mentored by both professors in my time throughout Holy Cross.

The classes in my junior year were especially interesting. In the fall, I took all English classes: Milton, Shakespeare, The World Novel, and a Creative Writing class. For two of the classes, I loved being able to focus on the works of only one author. It really gave us the opportunity to learn more about individual authors’ lives and notice the progression of their beliefs and skills over the course of their literary careers. The World Novel was also a cool class, getting to find out more about why authors in foreign nations, particularly ones with colonial pasts such as India and South Africa, chose to write their novels in English. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, even my Study Abroad classes were a highlight, particularly a biology course called Australian Wildlife Biology. We frequently had guest lecturers, and took several field trips (or “excursions”) across the semester to do some field research. 

A tagged black swan we observed in Australian Widlife Bio
On a class trip to the Melbourne Zoo

This year, I finished the last of my major credits and got to immerse myself in some intriguing course offerings. This fall, I took Museum Studies, taught by a professor who headed the Worcester Art Museum (WAM) for many years. I really liked getting to explore more of Worcester, since it can be tricky to feel connected to the city while up on the Hill! 

Across the whole year, I’ve taken some courses on Classical Literature, since I really loved reading the Odyssey when I was younger.  Finally, this semester, I’m taking a course on Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Although I don’t speak any Russian, the class is in English, and it’s taught me a lot about the country’s history and culture which I never knew. That’s one of the great things about Holy Cross- the liberal arts curriculum grants you the opportunity to explore many subject areas, and enrich yourself in doing so.        

Until next time!
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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!