Miami University (OH)
2005 - 2009
Major : English - Creative Writing
I was a creative writing major at Miami University and consider myself very lucky to have been a part of this thriving program! It is one of the largest in the United States with an increasingly global curriculum and outlook. I met many incredible professors, authors, and peers. While there, I co-created Miami's first creative writing club and acted as Vice President until I graduated. The creative writing program included :::
- Fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction screenwriting workshops led by award-winning, actively publishing faculty. Although I studied fiction mostly, I participated in poetry readings and submitted writing to the local paper.
- Literature courses offer global perspectives, understanding of literary and historical traditions, and models for literary experiment. We read a variety of novels by domestic and international authors set throughout the world.
- Literary Marketplace and Issues in the Profession courses focus on the business site of the literary life. I took a course on how to prepare myself for the professional world of writing where we had to anonymously submit our writing to a journal created by our professors. My short story won first prize.
- A senior capstone in creative writing that gives students the opportunity to hone ambitious writing projects. My senior capstone project was a book of original short stories with the literary theme of the struggle of innocence with the eruption of technology and a loss of natural connection.
Minor : Sociology - Social Studies
The Sociology minor at Miami is for liberal arts students interested in the study of society, structures, social processes and human interaction. These range from two-person interactions to relations between large social institutions to relations between nations. This minor is what inspired me to pursue the Intercultural Communication thematic sequence while abroad. It included :::
- An in-depth study on social relations on a global and local scale. This included discussions of the international social powers and the positive and negative aspects that come with such domination.
- A comprehensive look on the social problems our world currently faces, the problems that may potentially arise, and the solutions that nations have come to in the past to overcome issues. The position of this class was to expand our knowledge from information domestically to knowledge of international problems. This included the influence of the U.S. on the rest of the world as well as the rest of the world on the U.S.
- An introduction to research methods that includes observation, theory, and practice. We observed graduate students conducting interviews, we applied theory to out-of-class projects, we created and employed polls, and learned how to survey research participants in order to gain appropriate information.