I always thought that I would be a high school English teacher after I finished college.

I’m a senior at Westfield State University, and one semester shy of graduation, I decided that teaching—with the core competency requirements in this day and age—wouldn’t be satisfying. I want to teach people something special, because they want to learn rather than because they have to.

I have always liked to write, and I realized that I can educate through my writing, reaching people of all ages with my words and help them through good times or bad. So, I changed my major to English, rather than education.

As I deepen my journey as a writer, I want to try different writing styles and explore the various careers in which I could use my degree. That’s what led me into my current internship at Beetle Press, where I’ll write press releases and blogs, copy edit client manuscripts, and raise awareness about the company through social media —all while keeping my studies organized and on track.

My favorite genre to write about is creative nonfiction. I’ve written short stories that I could expand into a novel one day and journal entries that could become a memoir.

I am also very passionate about my work in the Westfield State University English honor society, Sigma Tau Delta. My role in the honor society is to help raise money for our annual convention each spring.

Members also like to help others in the wider community in various way. For instance, we are collecting items to donate to refugee families in the Westfield area.

We also use our English skills to assist others; we tutor English majors at the university, helping them with midterm and final papers. In this way, Sigma members develop relationships through their writing skills, and we encourage others to grow as well.

After graduation, I’d like to work for a book publishing company or focus on my own writing project. In my spare time, I’d also like to find a way to continue to be helpful in the community, outside of my honor society group. It’s important to me to be kind, caring and compassionate and to spread goodwill to everyone I meet.

My support system is my family. My mother is always finding new ways to help encourage me, even when I’m uncertain of my direction, and she assures me that I’ll know it when I find the right path.

My two sisters, Samantha, 19, and Cameron, 8, both help me develop as a writer, too. Samantha passes on writing tips from her teachers. (She’s an engineering major and doesn’t realize that I may already know these things.) And Cameron asks me to read my writing to her, even if it is just my homework, after she has curled up with her favorite blanket.

I hope one day, I can read my own book to her, even if she’s already heard all the stories a million times.

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I have loved to write since I was in fourth grade, and my teacher put a picture on the board and asked us to write about it. He said he would display the best pieces, and mine was one of them. He told me privately that I had talent, and he began to allow me 40 minutes of class time to write. Once my stories were completed, my teacher invited me to read them to the class.

I had only recently been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and put on an individual education plan at that time, but my teacher didn’t dismiss me. He helped  me identify my superpower.

I left fourth grade inspired, confident and passionate about writing. So, I never stopped. It is what I know I want to do.

I am a junior at Westfield State University, majoring in English with a concentration in writing. I mostly write creatively—short fiction stories, novels. However, I wanted to branch out of my comfort zone and look at professional writing, so I connected with Janice at Beetle Press to express interest in an internship that will give me experience in PR, blogging and other writing styles.

After graduation in 2018, I see myself living in an apartment in a city, working for a publishing company, editing manuscripts by day, and writing my own novels by night.

In the five months I will spend working with Janice at Beetle Press, I will write press releases for clients, pen blogs for beetlepress.com, help manage Janice’s various social media efforts, and copyedit and provide feedback on several authors’ manuscripts, and perhaps even one of Janice’s own books.

I am excited with the opportunity to grow as a writer, and I think it’s incredible that I will have my hands in work produced for business people and nonprofit organizations as well as for creative writers. That is a broad scope of real-world knowledge to glean in one semester, and I can take it with me.

When I am not working with Janice, I am the fiction editor for Westfield State’s literary magazine, Persona. I have been on the staff since freshman year, helping to produce the creative publication. I’m originally from Mansfield, a small town 40 minutes from Boston.

I have an interesting family. My dad, Rick, works as a certified mental health counselor at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge and has his own private practice in Watertown. My mom, Devon, is a nutritionist and will soon work in my dad’s practice. My older sister, Jenna, is going for her PhD in microbiology at University of California Berkeley. I also have two cats and a black lab at home.

A fun fact about me: I wrote a 100-plus-page novel with a local published author in my senior year of high school for my senior project and only had six months to write it. I designed a cover for the piece, and put it together in a binder. I am currently working on getting my short stories published and then maybe I’ll go back to that novel and edit it!

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