Writing has always been a deeply personal practice since childhood. I kept journals, wrote stories about my friends and experiences, and strongly believed that the handwritten letter would never be replaced by email. Although I certainly appreciate digital writing more than I used to, I still use writing to process my experiences in much of the same ways. The documents displayed here demonstrate how my values and interests are incorporated into my professional identity.

During my one-and a-half year internship with Alamance Magazine, a monthly human-interest magazine known for “Celebrating the Character of our County,” I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the unique culture of the community that surrounded Elon University. This internship presented an interesting rhetorical situation, because being from Maryland, I was considered an outsider to the culture of the South. This was a valuable learning experience because I had to build rapport with community partners who might not initially trust me. The first piece listed here, “Brewing and Renewing: How Beer can Revive our Community,” challenged my cultural boundaries as I explored a topic I was very unfamiliar with: the local and home brewing movement.

The second piece represents how I engaged with Irish life and culture during my semester-long study abroad program in Dublin, Ireland. Students at Dublin Business School (DBS) created this blog for academic and marketing purposes. Our professor, Donal, wanted us to write not only for him, but also for future study abroad students who could learn from our experiences and choose DBS as their place of study. This piece accounts for both the target and intermediary audiences who might engage with the blog. “Tá Gaeilge Agat?” (Do you speak Irish?) was one of my favorite blog posts because it synthesized my experiences in my Irish language class and situated them within my own research interests in the States.

Finally, I had the opportunity to explore culture by writing as if I were a member of that culture. The third piece, “Bohemian Life,” was one of the final assignments in my Writing, Rhetoric, and Civic Action class. This class was highly experiential, and required us to take on a new persona as we explored the civic debates surrounding women’s suffrage and the unionization of labor movements in Greenwich Village, 1913. I was assigned the character of Polly Holladay, the owner of a Bohemian restaurant that served as a forum for public debate for both sides of the issue. This “Bohemian Life” essay represents how I came out as a Bohemian anarchist at the end of the game, surprising the two factions and throwing the game. This piece is an interesting showcase of my hypothetical and creative writing skills in a professional forum.

Writing is an important method for engaging with a new culture or new ideals because it has challenged me to move outside my comfort zone with writing. I have become a flexible and adaptable professional writer who is interested in learning about the world.