This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at PS Berks chapter.
Seth Harkins is one member of the three person team that runs Shadows of Birds, Penn State Berks’ own literary magazine. This recently graduated professional writing major is known as a selfless, modest, creative and smart guy with the ability to make people happier just by being in the room.
For his role in the magazine, he assists with editing, decision-making, design, blog posts and twitter promotions. He became involved with SOB to promote student writing activities on campus.
“I really enjoy seeing students on campus become excited about their writing. It’s something we never really had at Berks. We never had a culture for the arts or creative writing. We are focused on IST and engineering,” he said.
He would know, since he spent his first two years of college as an IST major because he thought it was practical. He switched his major to professional writing his junior year to pursue his passion, but found that his passion can also be practical. The most valuable skill he learned from the major is to constantly be aware of the audience and expectations.
“Writing translates well into a life skill. It’s an important, critical skill to have,” he said.
He put this skill to use during his work with SOB. Seth and his team worked long and hard on the publicatoin. They ran into many roadblocks along the way; everyone was nervous it wouldn’t be taken seriously at all. However, faculty and students from all disciplines have been amazed with the end result.
He is modest when asked about his greatest accomplishment in regards to SOB.
“It’s hard to talk about an individual accomplishment when you are a team. Our greatest accomplishment is bringing so many student voices together in one place,” he said.
Seth left the Shadow of Birds team upon his graduation in Dec. 2013 and has been contemplating attending grad school for design. He wishes to one day land a job in design working with a magazine or website.
After looking at past issues of SOB and documents that he’s made for campus clubs, a career in design is where he belongs. But no matter where he ends up, there’s no doubt that this Penn State graduate is going to do great things.
Our Campus Celebrity leaves us with this wise parting advice: “It’s important to be who you want to be and who you are and not let anyone get in the way of that.”
Follow Seth @Seth_Harkins
Follow Shadows of Birds @Shadowsofbirds1