Dear Dr. Gallagher,
I want to open this introductory reflection letter by first thanking you for teaching this amazingly enriching course. As a transfer student, this was my first semester at the University of Pittsburgh, so I had no idea what to expect from this course when I first enrolled. In the beginning, I thought this was going to be an average writing course with dull assignments. However, after only the first couple of weeks, I became enamored by the curriculum as I learned to not only research and write about a topic I’m extremely passionate about, but also make a difference with my writing by appealing to specific audiences within the public. While each major assignment — personal narrative, Q&A profile, and white paper — were vastly different from one another, they each taught me to persuade and engage my audience through rhetor-backed arguments and stylistic design elements.
One of my favorite assignments from this course is the Q&A profile as it allowed me to break out of my shell and interview a knowledgeable person in the literary field, something I never would’ve done without this course. With that said, I also loved working on my personal narrative and white paper — both pieces of writing gave me the opportunity to flex my creative muscles while researching and learning about the lack of funding within my field of interest, a topic that I’ve never been more passionate about. As I continue my academic journey in the hopes of becoming a book editor and novelist, I’ll certainly apply what I’ve learned from this course into my future academic, professional, and personal work.
Throughout this course, I’ve completed the Scribe and Grammarian UpGrade projects. While I was initially hesitant to try for the Grammarian project — due to its presentation requirement — it ended up being one of the most eye-opening assignments from this course; not only did it allow me to practice my rusty public speaking skills, it also helped me learn about and teach a vital topic in grammar, dashes and hyphens. Needless to say, I will forever apply my newfound knowledge about the differences between en dashes and em dashes into my future academic, professional, and personal writing.
With that said, I’d like to clearly state that I’m aiming to complete the Wordsmith UpGrade project. Not only did I completely revise my white paper — per your incredibly helpful feedback — I also substantially revised my Q&A profile.
For the white paper, I revised both the textual and visual elements. In regards to the content, I made sure to better highlight my own voice — rather than my interviewee’s, Jess Simms — by condensing their quotes and making sure to end each section with my own writing. In addition, per your suggestions, I adjusted my white paper’s title — from “Lack of” to “Need for Funding Pittsburgh Literary Projects” — as well as my white paper’s headers — I removed “Being” from two of my headers as well as “Both Sides” from one of my headers. In addition, I took your feedback about my conflicting use of the terms literary “projects,” “magazines,” and “journals” to heart and made sure to clarify, in my first sentence of the introduction, that “literary projects” is the general term for lit mags and journals and, therefore, would be the most widely-used term throughout the paper. Finally, I made sure to change Michel’s now-paywalled source, removed any redundant citations, fixed any and all grammatical issues, as well as fact-checked Tuch’s article about writers who got their start in literary projects (you were right — only some of the authors listed truly got started in literary projects!)
For the white paper’s visual elements, I took your feedback about my lack of white space (or brown space) to heart and made sure to shrink the text in order to enhance the amount of white space throughout my white paper. In addition, I put a light-colored block behind all of my text to limit any legibility issues that could’ve arisen from switching between dark text on light background and light text on dark background. Furthermore, I removed any images that weren’t backed by a Creative Commons license and replaced them with my own photos/images from already-cited sources, such as The Mellon Foundation logo or the LAEF Impact Report cover page. Finally, I made sure to clearly cite Chill Subs, going so far as to add a paragraph in the middle of the white paper to better accompany and contextualize my visual aid.
For my Q&A Profile, I diligently went through each quotation, line by line, to remove/fix any grammatical errors. In addition, I condensed large portions of each of Jess’s answers to the best of my ability, such as the specific ins and outs of After Happy Hour Review as well as Jess’s personal thoughts on Chatham University. I also removed any redundancies within my headline, subheading and introduction as well as slightly reworded some of my questions to better encompass Jess’s answers. To my knowledge, the only suggestion of yours that I passed up was the one to remove the question about local institutions’ involvement in literary arts funding entirely from the interview; I chose to keep this question (heavily condensing Jess’s answer) because I still find Jess’s answer enlightening and believe the question is highly relevant given the contents of my white paper.
With all of this in mind, I want to reiterate how proud I am of the completed work housed in my Substack newsletter, Literary Phoenix. The logo, name, and bio of the newsletter was inspired by my involvement with the Community College of Allegheny County’s Phoenix Literary Arts Journal outlined in my personal narrative while the brown color palette of the newsletter was inspired by the visual contents of my white paper. In the future, if I were to continue adding to this newsletter, I could see myself interviewing other editors and writers within the indie literary publishing scene, expanding this publication into a profile of hard-working people within the literary field.
All in all, I’m supremely proud of this final project — from the design to the writing, I feel I’ve given this project my all and have created a harmonious, engaging and informational newsletter. In spite of my (many) challenges navigating Substack, I’m happy to call Literary Phoenix my own and might even come back to it one day. I hope you enjoy perusing through this newsletter just as much as I enjoyed creating it. Thank you once again for an incredibly eye-opening semester — I hope to be your student again in the near future, Dr. Gallagher!
Sincerely,
Natalie Cohen