Wrapping Up
Andriana writes about her senior year and looks back on her time at Carleton!
Andriana writes about her senior year and looks back on her time at Carleton!
Hello everyone!
It is the beginning of June, which means that my college career is rapidly coming to an end. It is true—I am a graduating senior, about to be released into the world. It is exhilarating. Empowering. It is also, to be honest, super daunting.
Looking Ahead
Because it has been forever and a day since I last posted (whew, senior year is *busy*), I shall briefly reintroduce myself. I am an English major and Cross-Cultural Studies minor. (Oh, and did I mention I’m a senior?) Over the past four years, I have been involved in many writing organizations on campus: The Carletonian, the Second Laird Miscellany, the Writing Center, and Carleton’s academic journal, The Undergraduate Journal of Humanistic Studies. It should then come as no surprise that I have decided to go into publishing (or try, anyway).
Publishing!
In December of my junior year, I had the excellent opportunity to complete a Carleton externship with a New York literary agency. Because I had such a positive experience, I decided to spend the following summer working as an editorial intern with Pegasus Books. Through the externship and the internship, I was able to gain a glimpse into the publishing world: how to assess a manuscript, how to represent a client, and how to approach editorial work at the first stage vs. the final stage. And in the fall, I will be fortunate enough to attend the Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford University.
The Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford is a four-week program that immerses students in all aspects of book publishing. I will get to hear from representatives from every part of the industry, meet peers who are also just starting out, and simulate the publishing process in an intense week-long workshop. The best part? I’ll get to do all of this in a city with tons of literary history. Needless to say, I cannot wait.
But even as I look ahead to the next adventure awaiting me, I have been using the final weeks of my final year at Carleton to reflect upon my time here.
Looking Back
Comps
This year was perhaps my favorite. It was also a big one—I comps-ed! The English department has four comps options: creative writing, colloquium, a research essay, and a project of your own design. I selected colloquium, which is the most unique. Each participant spends winter term of their senior year working as a group to read through a syllabus built around a certain theme. The group then leads discussions about the texts throughout the term, often inviting professors to join. At the end of the term, each member of the group submits twenty pages of writing about select texts on the syllabus, constructing a thesis that somehow relates back to that year’s theme.
This year, our theme was activism in literature. We read five novels, including The Handmaid’s Tale, My Year of Meats, and Persepolis. We went to the Twin Cities in the fall to watch a production of Sally & Tom at the Guthrie. We had group screenings to watch the films and shows on our list, such as an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice and episodes of the recent series Dickinson. We invited three professors to discuss the texts with us. And, at the end of the term, we wrote. A lot! And it was a blast.
Classes
In addition to compsing, I took some awesome classes this year. In the fall, I took Shakespeare I, which surprised me by how much I loved it. I have historically not been the biggest Shakespeare fan, but this course gave me a new appreciation for his canon. I also took Terrorism and the Novel, which had a fantastic syllabus. I finally read Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, which had been on my to-read list for a long time, and I really enjoyed it. And this term, I took my English research seminar, a course on Seductive Fiction. It was a small class, and so we had a lot of great discussions. I am currently in the midst of a paper about Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple, which I highly recommend if you’re into, y’know, seduction plots and whatnot.
Fun, fun, fun!
Outside of academics, I’ve had a lot of fun watching new shows with my friends—I’m currently on the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—and taking trips to the Twin Cities. For our break this term, we went to Minneapolis to get dinner, which was a very nice way to spend an evening in May. We participated in campus traditions like Sproncert, Late Night Breakfast, and the Primal Scream. And, of course, there have been a lot of walks around Northfield as the weather has gotten increasingly beautiful.
My senior year has been an excellent end to my time at Carleton. And, overall, my experience at Carleton has been fantastic, all things considered. Yes, there was a pandemic. But! I have loved my time here. It was 100% the right place for me. I have made fantastic friends, grown as a student, and learned a lot about myself.
And the greatest thing of all? The blogging! Definitely the blogging… 😉
Andriana is a native of Richmond, VA, though her love of snow suggests she might be a northerner at heart. She is in her senior year at Carleton, where she is an English major and a Cross-Cultural Studies minor. When Andriana isn’t busy staying warm in the Minnesotan tundra, you can find her binge-reading, playing music, or watching a favorite movie or show for the umpteenth time. Meet the other bloggers!