Katie Williams

Self- Reflection In my position as an editorial intern for the Scroll, Scribe and Screen, I had the daily tasks of helping students engage in classroom discussions, editing all of the drafts of the students writing, and providing support for the design of their article. My job was to sit in on the Editing Workshop class two times a week. Towards the end of every week, the supervisor and the rest of the intern team would meet to discuss the progress of the students and determine different strategies for the next class. Each week, the duties and responsibilities of the position would stay consistent. Towards the end of the semester, I got to help with more of the design work and do overall edits for last semesters newsletter. I also got practice evaluating writers as a whole because I was responsible for giving feedback to the instructors about my small editing group. In the beginning of my internship, I really enjoyed contributing to the class discussions. The students in the class werent very talkative and open in the beginning, and I wanted to foster a great, collaborative atmosphere like I had when I took the Editing Workshop class last semester. Throughout the semester, the students started to speak up more and I took more of a backseat role in supporting them with their articles. I would walk around the classroom and engage my students with their article and help them troubleshoot issues with Adobe InDesign. I did not know that much about InDesign beforehand, and I only had a general familiarity with it. However, actually coming around to help each student and figure out how to help them helped me in the long run by allowing me to learn those skills for myself. In a way, I was able to teach my group of students, and my group of students was able to teach me. Some strengths of my work as an intern would be my ability to engage and contribute to the discussion of the class in the beginning. Also, my line editing skills and adherence to AP style made it easy to spot and correct errors in the articles. However, some things I could work on would be my evaluation skills and ability to content edit. I found it easy to correct surface errors in the work that I saw and I was able to provide a general comment about each of my students articles, but I was not very good at coming up with suggestions on how to fix a current issue. I noticed that as time went on, I became better at it, so more practice could help in that area. Also, every week when it came time to evaluate my students, I struggled about what to say. It was easy to say, this was a good article, or this article needs more help, but I had trouble assessing their abilities as writers. Towards the end I was headed in the right direction, but performing these duties in my internship made it easy to spot these flaws in myself.

For future interns to thrive in this internship, I would definitely suggest keeping up with your student edits so youre able to assess their performance at a moments notice. There were times when I hadnt read a students latest draft yet and I wouldnt know what to say when the instructor brought up that student and asked how they were doing. I could say how well they were doing in small groups, but it was difficult to assess them when I didnt read the draft. Also, I would suggest preparing a presentation early in advance. I was set to give a class presentation

Katie Williams about writing opportunities on campus, but then I got sick with bronchitis. I wish I had the ability to give the presentation earlier on in the semester, because that would have looked great on my resume. Also, I would suggest keeping up with the journalism industry and current news articles that are causing headlines by bringing up ethical issues. We talked a lot about media ethics, and it was easy to contribute as an intern when you knew about the actual article that the class was talking about. I have interned in many different places before this internship. They have all been in office environments, and this was the first internship I had where I was not in the office environment. Instead, I was in the classroom and behind meeting doors. I got a chance to look behind a wall that many college students dont get to see and witness how classes are taught and how students are managed. The instructors perspective is obviously very different than a students perspective, and being able to witness the former was a privilege for me. If I could go back and change something about this semester, it would be my schedule. I wish I had more personal time to devote to this internship, but I actually had two internships this semester, I was taking six classes (not including this class, which I attended in the evenings) and held a couple editorial positions on campus. I was stretched out, bled, and left to dry with my schedule, and it often reflected in my preparedness for all of my responsibilities that I had to do. I would definitely advise future interns not to take on too much. When you do something, you want to be able to give it your all. The people that you work with dont care how much is on your plate they only see your ability to provide good results and work hard. I always want to put my best foot forward, and it upsets me when I look back to think about all the times that I could have been able to go above and beyond. This is definitely a learning experience for me and for my next position that I hold, I will definitely not overcommit myself! I really enjoyed working with the other interns at my internship. I was fortunate enough to be placed with the best students from our former editing workshop class, and we all meshed well and gelled well together. I learned a lot from watching them evaluate their students and listening to their contributions in class, and I wanted to be able to provide support that is on their same level. I think we all encouraged each other in that supportive environment and we were all able to leave the internship with a network of great contacts that we can reach out to in the future. Finally, I learned so much from watching our instructors, Jack Clifford and Elizabeth Bettendorf. They were my supervisors for this internship. They were formerly my instructors for the Editing Workshop class last semester, but this semester, I got the chance to work more carefully beside them in helping them organize the class for this new crop of Editing Workshop students. I learned so much from listening to their discussions. I found their topics and wisdom to be very valuable the first time around when I took their class last semester, and even though I heard the same lectures again this semester, I still was very interested in what they had to say. This is probably the most valuable class I have taken here at my time at Florida State. Jack has an excellent background with design and in the newsroom, and he has a lot of great things to say

Katie Williams about media ethics. Elizabeth comes with an excellent news background also, and I really enjoyed hearing her advice and perspective about current trends in the media. I know that I can count on both of these sources being valuable to me after my impending graduation. I have already reached out to both for letters of recommendation, and they have served me well in my search for a post-graduate job. I cant thank them enough for giving me the opportunity to thrive in this internship. Sample 1 through 3 of my edits are articles for the Scroll, Scribe and Screen newsletter. The last four are personal columns that some of the students wrote and I edited. Because some of the material contains sensitive content, I redacted the names of the students in their papers. I included the original draft and my edited version, but I calculated the word count only for the original version. Here are the word counts for each of my samples: Sample one: 1,612 Sample two: 1,810 Sample three: 1,360 Sample four: 658 Sample five: 1,564 Sample six: 1,055 Sample seven: 1,231 Total word count: 9,290