The Writing Process – My Internship Reflection

When I first applied for this internship through the Elon Job Network, I wasn’t necessarily sure what the tasks would entail. All I knew was that it was a Publishing internship with the PWR department, but beyond that, I didn’t know what my day-to-day duties would look like.

Essentially, this internship was made possible due to a grant from Elon’s OER department to create the core-textbook for the PWR department. The textbook will be an edited collection of readings from rhetoric and writing studies covering several disciplinary themes including but not limited to: the history of rhetoric; visual rhetoric; science and technical writing; diversity, equity & inclusion; project management; social media writing; and editing & publishing. Ultimately, I created reading guides that served as questions to be in this final textbook that were crafted with the intention to get students thinking rhetorically.

 

One of the goals for this grant funded textbook is to bridge the financial gap for students so they can save money on textbooks. Starting the internship consisted of creating a timeline for this textbook to make its way online. It contained meetings with faculty in the English department and Communications office to ensure the transition from scratch to the digital realm, learn about ADA guidelines, etc. But most of all, it contained an essence of consistency in weekly tasks toward the common goal of completing this website for the greater good of PWR students. After all, this was the most important aspect.

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As this internship came to an end, I can confidently say my current skill set was not only improved, but expanded upon by the digital tasks it enforced. If you had told me just a few months prior I would feel somewhat comfortable on WordPress to create a website from scratch, I would’ve never believed it (which was the initial website software that my internship was stored upon). I always found the learning process for digital softwares intimidating. However, I’m glad this internship left me with no other choice than to exit my comfort zone. It also increased my stamina for long readings and reflectional writings, in addition to identifying a readings main themes (since that is what the reading guide questions were based off of). The biggest initial challenge from this internship was simply getting used to this style of reading and writing. It felt overwhelming, at first, to hear about all the different chapters and readings left to do, in conjunction with the set up of the website as a whole. Thankfully, Dr. Maynard helped ensure I was on the right track throughout the first few reading guides I created for the textbook. We used the Bloom’s Taxonomy technique for our sentence structure, which is essentially a set of hierarchical models used for classification of educational learning objectives. This is assistive for students to gradually delve deeper into the course material the further along they continue with the questions.

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Overall, I’m grateful for the experience this internship gave me in providing a new perspective towards what can be done with a Professional Writing background. Additionally, I’m thankful for its way of showing me how much further my skillset could expand through digital softwares; something I initially viewed as difficult has now become a vital learning experience. Click on the links below to see some of the reading guides I created based upon the readings I was assigned throughout the internship!