By Madison Terry
Up until my junior year of college I dreaded writing in an academic setting. Now, after discovering UC Santa Barbara’s journalism offerings, I want to turn writing into a career.
When I was in high school, writing typically came in the form of a timed, in-class essay or a cumulative semester paper on a 100-year-old book that I and other students SparkNoted the night before the deadline. The stress-inducing, timed in-class essays became triggers for anxiety as I simply tried to get all of my knowledge on the page, throwing all structure and flow out the window. Similarly, literature review assignments stripped all the creativity from writing and one was left with a detached summary.
General education college courses didn’t change this much. Instead of five-page papers on Shakespeare, one must analyze research and try to make sense of 50-page journal articles. Needless to say, this type of writing did not inspire me and I spent each quarter putting off my papers to the last possible moment.
But then, as a junior at UC Santa Barbara, I decided to try out a class in the Writing Program called Magazine Writing with Ellen O’Connell-Whittet. When the class started with a Buzzfeed quiz and the professor explained that she had worked at The New Yorker magazine in Manhattan, I sensed this would be a drastically different experience than I’d had in the past.
The course Magazine Writing ignited a passion for writing in me that I didn’t know I could find. I attribute this to the hands-on practice we received and the passion Whittet has for journalism. Each class felt like a meeting where we were treated as equals and could bounce ideas off one another until they were perfect.
When it came to assignments, the creative freedom we were given made it feel like we were crafting a magazine together. One assignment that truly allowed me to throw myself into a story was the feature article. I wrote a piece about my younger sister and her struggle with a disorder called Misophonia, a sound sensitivity disorder that triggers anxiety and anger. This deeply personal writing experience showed me just how much I enjoyed writing and that I wanted to pursue it further.
After Magazine Writing, I took three other Writing Program courses and decided to continue learning about journalism as a campus correspondent for the The College Post. This real life setting with deadlines, interviews, and published writing has been exhilarating and has made me eager for more opportunities to publish my writing.
Currently, I am pursuing the professional writing minor in hopes that I can turn writing into a career. If someone had told me as a senior in high school that I would be choosing to write, and potentially for the rest of my life, I would have laughed. The professors, classes, and experiences in UCSB’s writing program completely changed the experience for me, and I’m so thankful for that.
Madison Terry is a Senior at UC Santa Barbara majoring in Communication. She wrote this for her course Journalism for Web and Social Media.