By: Jessi Walker
I have recently made the switch over to editor for the Kutztown University Her Campus chapter, which is an unexpected change I thought I’d never make when I joined the team in November. I wasn’t very confident in my editing skills as it is one of the weaknesses in my own writing, teachers in high school always were contradictory about what were actually rules and constant insidious ways of explaining said rules, and I loved writing so much. I was so excited to write for Her Campus that even my professor called me out on doing articles but not his rewrites because I was so passionate about what I was writing about on this site.
I didn’t actually quit writing, and if anything, I am writing more than ever. That’s actually a part of the problem for me. I believe it boils down to the amount of writing I have to do for this semester. I am in a creative writing class here at Kutztown, and that class is a lot of fun. I’ve never had a writing class before in high school despite my attempts to take more courses like that so I could improve my skills, and now I am finally in one. As fun as the assignments are for that class, whether that be the in class workshops or the creative and reading assignments that are daily, it can get me bogged down a bit creatively. This isn’t as much of a problem as the other classes though.
One of the most dreaded assignments this week for my Reading and Writing in the Professions class was the interviewing assignment. First, I had a public relations assignment where I had to create a brand style guideline which felt a little daunting for a first task. This task really wasn’t that bad, but I had to think really hard about the kind of language, diction, and other elements I would use for myself as a brand. It was a pretty elaborate assignment on my end. This turned out okay and I was proud of it, but it was exhausting to do.
I also had to go to an event this week and interview 3 random people from different groups. There is a hot issue happening on Kutztown’s campus over a proposed plan for a warehouse to be built very close to campus that would tear down a popular diner as well. This would cause several issues on my campus, and so I decided it would be a good idea to interview people at that event as I considered already going in the first place. The township meeting ended up dropping the warehouse proposal issue last minute, and this caused me to panic and sob in my dorm room over how I was going to go to an event now to interview people for this journalism assignment.
I ended up realizing I could still go, as the campus’s transportation to the event wasn’t canceled, and the student body still flocked to the township hall building to speak their voices at the end. I had a personal win where I confronted authority for threatening to call the cops on a student for speaking when they had the right to be here, but the whole day was full of stress and because of the sobbing incident I forgot to do my spanish work for that day. That is more of my own fault, and not any professor or any assignments obviously, but it definitely distracted my mind greatly as I have some pretty intense anxiety around socialization but also just in general.
Speaking of Spanish, that is also considered language and writing heavy in my opinion. I am killing my brain trying to write comprehensive sentences in Spanish, understanding the audios for the assignments, and trying to remember all of these differences with Spanish. The first week I did really great, but I started slipping, and I might have failed my first exam. Maybe I’m just insecure and didn’t fail, but I am not confident in the idea of that. This does add to my stress and burn out from writing, even though this is in another language and it isn’t as elaborative or deep as my major courses, and I have to do this work daily or do multiple days at once. My preferred strategy is the latter, but I seemed to get burned out of that.
Copy-editing is for the most part fine. It’s right after my creative writing course, and there’s not as much work there. Mostly my class is given a small sheet of grammatical errors with random sentences, and we bring them in the next class to submit them. Last week though, we did have to write a paper and I got a bit stressed out trying to comb through that paper to make sure it wasn’t flawed in a class like that where editing matters. The paper was a bit daunting to me for that reason.
One of the scariest issues isn’t even here yet, and I’m not even as worried as I initially was. Over the winter break, one syllabus was released for my German comics in English course and I looked over it before I was going to go to bed. My heart dropped as I read that I would have to create my own graphic novel for the class, which is more than I ever had anticipated. I am not a good artist at all, and the idea of creating a story I could draw with my lack of abilities terrified me. I was such a bad artist it’s not really passable what I draw, and I was a little bit better after my art one class my senior year in high school, but I haven’t practiced on it at all since. My mom talked me through it and I didn’t drop the class because the graphic novel really isn’t as big of a deal as I first thought it was, but it is still a scary idea. I’m really okay with that class now for the most part, but I still have a bit of gnawing guilt inside of me that I should really start early because I am such a bad artist, and I feel terrible I haven’t started on it yet which causes a loop of stress about it as I can’t think of what I definitely want to do yet and I’m scared about messing it up.
Winter is also for sad people. While I enjoy the clothes I have for winter typically better, I can’t stand winter overall. I just feel so much worse in the winter time or spring. I don’t think this is necessarily related to the seasons itself, at least not completely, but rather events in my life that surround spring semesters. Fall semesters are so much different from entering a spring semester. Fall semesters are always after a long and hot summer break that was filled with great memories, but in summer I’m always thinking in excitement for the fall. I look forward to my classes better, and I don’t feel like I drain energy as fast. It’s also warmer for longer during the fall semester, and it feels like there is more to do, so it’s easier for me to get out of bed and have a better attitude in the morning.
All of this contributed to why I quit writing weekly for Her Campus, and why I decided to become an editor. I feel so exhausted from writing and from life that writing an article every week just makes me want to start bawling. I want to write and express my ideas regularly like that, but when Friday would come to post articles on Trello and when I’d have nothing yet and when I’d have to sleepily write a half-baked article or not turn one in at all, it was a terrible option for both things. I was running out of things that would help me overcome my issues or burnout, as a lot of topics I could write about are currently being censored anyway, and I feel awful forcing myself to write within certain boundaries which burned me out of topics like entertainment. My professor was also right about priorities last semester, and while I got an A in his class, I would have been more confident in the hours before final grades were posted if I had done them. Writing so much extra is getting too much. While I do feel like I am editing a lot this semester a lot, if not more, than writing, I know that editing is easier work for me as long as it is not my own pieces. Digging open essays is a task that isn’t as hard, or stressful, for me. It may seem like technically more work to look at so many articles for Her Campus from our chapter, but I have positive hopes that editing for here will bring me better experiences through the spring semester, and that maybe I could publish things I am more proud of instead of quantity.