Through the magazine project, I learned more than I had ever imagined I would. The project covered so many different topics. It gave us creative freedom to focus on what suited us best and what fit our own experiences. As far as the writing for my article goes, I focused on the economy, recession and losing my internship. This was something that interested me and it was a way I could share my internship experience and relate it to current American affairs. All year, we’ve been having class discussions and learning about the economy and the recession. This was a chance for me to translate that new knowledge into an experience-derived article for the magazine. I tried to incorporate facts that readers would relate to, like comparing California’s unemployment rate to the rate of this semester’s interns.
I learned so much about the publishing industry in these few short weeks. Though I was often worried about the lack of extra time we had to complete this project, I see now that it was an accurate representation of what the printing and publishing world is like. The fast pace of this project and the printing deadlines that were absolutely crucial provided a sense of real world professionalism. This project wasn’t like other projects—we couldn’t ask for extensions or change due dates. Since we were working with our printers and knew we had such a short amount of time, the deadlines were set in stone. I’m glad that I was able to experience this because if I ever choose to enter a career field similar to this, I have had the experience of working towards fast-approaching deadlines.
Layout and design were so important in this project. To be honest, I was worried about this when we first started to collaborate ideas for the magazine. I was worried that our class of nearly 50 students wouldn’t be able to agree on one style, ideas would clash, the pages would appear cluttered or busy and our final product wouldn’t be cohesive. My worries were completely gone once we started the project and set specific style guides and jobs. We had a writing style guide for everyone to follow so grammar was consistent throughout the magazine. We also had a style guide with the fonts that everyone was to use and the correct formatting. I’m so glad we started the project off this way because it completely avoided any clash of ideas and gave everyone solid examples and expectations for their spreads, while still leaving room for creativity. I’m so proud of our final product because it is professional and cohesive and has nearly 50 authors.
I personally saw my writing skills develop throughout the course of this project. The skill that I was happiest to attempt and eager to continue developing was condensing my writing to send a clear message to the intended audience. I was able to practice this so much when I was writing my article. In the early drafts, I neglected to mention the actual message of the story until one of the last paragraphs. I had thought that I was building up to a climatic ending, but I had done it wrong and the paper really had no meaning. After critiques and new drafts, I had a final article that was drastically different from my first. I cut out a lot of unnecessary paragraphs along the way. I focused and expanded on the important parts and finished with a much stronger and more meaningful article. This quality of learning to send a clear message is very important, or else your reader will be lost in a mess of words. I want to work on this a lot more because it is difficult to find a balance of being simple, clear and understandable, yet still using literary tools and diction to make it a high-quality piece of writing.
