Lydee Striplin

12/01/2020

ENC4942

Reflective Essay

I’ve always been of the belief that school, or college rather, has very little to do with the real,

professional world. In my experience, the best way to learn about a job is to actually do the job

and no amount of classwork or one on one time with your professor will accurately prepare you

for a truly fast paced working environment. I have to say this internship with As If Magazine was

the one exception. Time and time again I found myself drawing on knowledge I acquired at

Florida State.

The most helpful course I think I’ve ever taken was Editing Workshop. I’ve always found

it odd that the Editing, Writing, and Media major focuses very little on actual line editing and

grammar, but this course really prepared me to work as an editorial intern whose tasks mostly

revolved around editing. The class helped me edit transcriptions for published interviews in a

way that was accurate and complete. Another course that was extremely helpful during my

internship was Writing and Editing in Print and Online. I actually credit this course as part of the

reason I got the internship in the first place because we worked on polishing our resumes to

attract potential employers. Beyond that, this course taught me how to work collaboratively,

something I was admittedly resistant to before realizing that a cohesive team can generate ideas

and creative solutions far more effectively than an individual. I was part of a team of three

interns and often times we were asked to split up weekly workloads amongst ourselves. Knowing
how to navigate the dynamics of group work, and at times even lead a group, was essential to my

success at the magazine. In that way, my school and work experiences were very similar.

Even so, the large majority of my English classes at FSU were vastly different from my

experiences interning. Most of my English courses have been focused on rhetoric and theoretical

framework which I find to be not only tedious but largely impractical. Writing in the professional

world is so different from academic writing that it’s like learning a whole new style. Apart from

adapting to APA style, I also had to learn to utilize brevity and conciseness whenever possible.

In a rhetoric paper you’re encouraged to write yourself in circles, theorizing and linking ideas,

somehow saying nothing at all in ten plus pages. In the magazine world, the goal is clarity and

incisiveness. I’ll provide an example from a previous internship working at a very small

publication called Civilian Magazine; over and over my editor would send me my articles back

with half of the text crossed out. She would always emphasize that I need not repeat myself or

over clarify what I meant in my writing lest my readers lose interest halfway through.

I think maybe the internship narrowed my definition of writing and editing but I suppose

the few creative writing classes I was taking simultaneously helped balance that out and open me

up to new definitions of what it means to compose and what it means to be a writer. What I mean

when I say that the internship narrowed my definition is that I did not have a ton of creative

freedom in this role, as you will see in my portfolio works. Most of my work consisted of line

editing, transcribing, and editing out grammatical errors in photo shoot credits. In this role I was

truly there to assist and observe. This is not to say that I didn’t value the experience or learn

anything from it, however. I certainly learned the ins and outs of the industry as well as the work
that actually goes into working at and starting a fashion magazine. It was a small company and I

was lucky to have the opportunity to discuss these matters with my boss and the person who

singlehandedly started the magazine, Tatijana Shoan. So, while the work I performed at As If did

inform my opinion of the industry and what it means to be a writer in fashion, it did little for my

actual definition of writing. All of this being said, my current definition of writing is the activity

of composing text whether it be with the intent of publication or otherwise. I want to keep myself

open to all forms of composing even if it isn’t meant to be seen by other people. I adore creative

writing and while I would be lucky to do this as a profession, I don’t want to drive myself away

from the art of writing just to write, or of writing purely to express a thought or emotion.

The internship certainly affected my professional development and as always is the case

with new work ventures, gave me a little bit more insight into how to conduct myself in a

professional environment and when communicating with superiors. In this specific case, I think

the experience working remotely was very valuable. I have a feeling working remotely in a way

that is both productive and effective will be a very marketable skill in the future. This experience

taught me how to stay on task and not procrastinate even when it was so tempting to do

everything last minute. In the line of work I would like to go into, knowing how to transcribe is

very important and I certainly did a lot of that. I plan to employ my new knowledge of the

fashion and magazine world in whatever I do next. Although I’m not sure where my life is

leading me at this moment, I know that my involvement with As If will continue to aid me and

the lessons I learned as an editorial intern will lend themselves to future opportunities.