By Kalyn Wells
November 13, 2015
When students in the Professional Writing Program begin thinking about applying for an internship, most assume they will be sitting at a desk writing articles for a whole summer.
Students rarely think about the other tasks that can be done by an editorial intern that will help build the publication. The tasks that I had to complete at my internship at Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) over the summer gave me the skills and knowledge I needed in order to acquire a better grasp on the entire editorial process.
Some of these tasks even prompted me to take certain professional writing courses.
When I say “tasks,” I mean real tasks. I don’t mean the stereotypical task of “getting coffee,” as I had heard too often before. I even expected that this is what I would be doing all summer. This clearly wasn’t my experience.
Within the three months I was an intern at WMU, I completed numerous tasks for the editor, copy editor, and even the administrative assistant. I was able to experience a few team meetings to help prepare for upcoming issues of the magazine. I also learned what it means to be a “team player” and how to do things that were outside of my interests and comfort zone.
The editorial process involves the company preparing for a year’s worth of monthly issues for the magazine a year before they are to be published.
My first and my main project at WMU was to assign the writers to an article type and the specific topic they wanted to write about. This task was time-consuming because it took much thought to prevent assigning the same topic to two different writers.
Also, in this project, I received a great amount of emails during the day from the writers. Some would change their mind, some would give me way too many options, and some didn’t give enough. The editor would then double-check the chart in which the names, topics, due date, and publication date were typed in to make sure that everything was correct and that the writers’ contracts were ready to be printed and signed.
This task did involve sitting at a computer for long hours at a time in a quiet environment. I really had to focus and make sure every detail was right.
Another important task I had to complete involved working with the copy editor. She works on the current issues being published and edits the articles for those issues that come in.
Whenever she receives a draft of the article, she checks for grammar, punctuation, and all of the other necessary elements. Once the article is proofread and corrected, it is then incorporated with the design layout and images are added to it. The copy editor then checks the layout and images to make sure everything lines up and is correct. If there are any changes to be made, she does it in Adobe InDesign.
The article is reprinted and she checks for any changes, again! I assisted her in checking for errors in the reprinted version of the article with the layout design and image included.
This was the point in my internship where I learned that I would be working with Adobe InDesign in my future career and that I needed to gain more knowledge on it after my internship ended.
One thing I had to do that was out of my comfort zone was speaking up in meetings about the next publication. I sat with all of the members who had anything to do with the publishing of the magazine, such as the editor, copy editor, graphic designer, and assistant editor. It was hard for me to be comfortable enough, as an intern, to throw my ideas out there and give criticism. Although I progressed throughout my internship, I knew that I needed to familiarize myself with talking in front of other people, sharing my ideas, and giving my opinion of others’ ideas.
For a small portion of the internship, I assisted the administrative assistant with organizational tasks. These included adding contact information to spreadsheets on Excel for a convention that WMU holds at the end of the summer, delivering mail, and wrapping gifts for guests at the convention.
Although these seem like meaningless tasks, they all helped me in some way.
Adding the names familiarized me with Excel, delivering mail allowed me get to know the other employees better, and wrapping the gifts taught me how to be a team player just by helping out others.
After being introduced to all of those tasks, I decided to register for the Developing Digital Documents class. Even though it is not required for my major, this class acted as a part two to my internship.
In this class I have gained experience in using InDesign. I have also developed a better grasp on what it’s like to build a publication.
From finding different fonts to giving feedback on other students’ work, this class has given me more insight on how publishing meetings work and what kind of comments are to be made in those meetings. Editing and rearranging have been significant components of this course as well.
In reverse to what is usually done, my internship introduced me to the programs that I would be using in building a publication, while the class gives me a more hands on experience.
An editorial internship is a great experience for a student who wants to have a career in the Professional Writing field. This particular kind of internship is important if they want to work behind the scenes in a publication, such as a managing editor or copy editor, as well as writing the articles and understanding how their own articles will be placed and edited.
