Life of a Blogger is a weekly meme hosted by The Novel Heartbeat. You can see the full list of topics HERE.
This week’s theme is school.
(There’s lots of links because I want everyone to know about these things. Haha)
I won’t go into discussing my high school, other than to tell you I graduated with only 68 other people and I was third in my class.
For college, I attended Mississippi University for Women (hence the “W Blogger” badge on the side of my blog). I was a member of the residential honors college and received a full scholarship to the school! MUW is located in Columbus, MS, and it will always hold a special place in my heart. I love that school. At “the W”, I was a member of the Revelers, one of several social clubs unique to the W’s campus. The Revelers are my family, forever, and I’ve met some of my best friends through my club.
Revelers like to have fun. 🙂
Love my Revelers
While at the W, I majored in English and minored in Spanish. As part of the residential honors program, I studied abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland for a month after my sophomore year. Because of my job in the honors college, I was able to do it again after my junior year as a mentor. This is when I met and interviewed Ian Rankin for my honors thesis (which was published).
Me with the lovely Ian Rankin
I graduated Magna Cum Laude and received the MUW Spirit Award (I seriously love that school!). I could go on and on about all the things I did while at the W and how much I love that school, but I’ll leave it at that.
I will say that it was because of the W that I studied abroad in Scotland, obviously, and it was because of my time studying abroad that I chose to attend the University of Stirling in Scotland to pursue my Master’s degree in Publishing Studies. I freaking loved this program (MLitt in Publishing Studies). Through this program, I found out about Bloody Scotland; its inaugural year was 2012, which is when I moved over to Scotland. I volunteered that first year and then went back in 2013 as the Volunteer Coordinator.
My 2012 Bloody Scotland program, signed by 24 amazing authors
I also interned at Freight Books and Pitch Publishing after meeting the owners through my program; each Thursday we had a publishing professional come talk to us about different aspects of the publishing industry (how cool is that?!). My dissertation was on the UNESCO Cities of Literature, and I was able to intern at the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature (the world’s first City of Literature!). AND I interned at Canongate Books in the publicity department last summer, which is probably my favorite internship so far. In addition to my internships, I took classes on marketing, design, and editorial practice. I created content for, designed, and wrote a marketing plan for my publishing project, a 16 pages sample of a magazine I created. That was super fun!
This is the cover of my magazine, titled 808 Magazine
I gained so much experience and had so many amazing opportunities during my program, and I got to live in Scotland for a year! I definitely don’t regret choosing this school.
What about you? Where did/do you go for school? Tell me in the comments!
Thanks for stopping by my Life of a Blogger post! 🙂
Wow! That’s so amazing that you got to study in Scotland. I think I would love to study abroad in the future. Your Master’s program sounds really neat as well. And like it took a lot of dedication and work and creativity. This was fun reading about your adventures 😀
It was an amazing experience, and it was indeed filled with a ton of creativity and hard work, both of which I always crave from any project. 🙂
I’m still stuck in the quagmire of grad school, and I haven’t had much time lately to be homesick for the W, but this made me feel it. 🙂 So glad to “meet” you and glad that Sarah set up the W Bloggers list!
It’s nice to virtually meet you, too!
I miss that school all the time. I LOVE the W. 🙂
🙂 Indeed.
Wow, this is all really impressive!
I was homeschooled from 5th grade through graduation (my ceremony was at my dance school’s Spring recital). I got a full tuition scholarship to Winthrop University , where I majored in Dance and minored in Poli Sci. I graduation Summa Cum Laude (one B in my very last semester – mainly because my Early American Political Thought professor and I had very differing ideologies :P). I’ve been homeschooling my own children for the past 4 years, with every intention of continuing through graduation.
Wow! That’s really impressive too! We both got full scholarships! Yay. 🙂 You majored in Dance? How cool! Any specific kind?
I primarily studied modern dance, with a fair amount of ballet and some jazz. I especially loved choreography classes and getting to be creative. That’s a major part of why I started the blog – as a creative outlet.
So cool!