Allison Underwood, a UAB graduate, sat down with me to discuss how the Professional Writing program can help students reach their career goals. Underwood currently works at Good Grit Magazine here in Birmingham, Alabama as a digital media coordinator. Good Grit focuses on an elegant and progressive reflection of southern heritage.
Underwood said, “I’ve lived here my whole life, but it wasn’t until I started working with Good Grit that I fell in love with the South. Good Grit brings the Southerner out of the box—there’s a place for everyone here!” This August will mark Underwood’s two years of employment at this magazine.
Underwood started off at Good Grit working as a paid intern before becoming a part-time staff member and currently the person in charge of running digital and social media. Some of the job activities include posting on social media sites such as Facebook, managing social profiles, emailing newsletters and creating graphics for profiles. Underwood mentioned having taken UAB’s Digital Media Capstone course, which brought about the unpaid internship. This allowed them to receive a job offer to be a part-time employee at Good Grit Magazine.
I asked about the experience that Underwood had prior to working at Good Grit. They gave credit to a professional writing background and how the degree has helped thus far. Underwood mentioned that they are thankful for having been introduced to the major early enough to pursue and finish the degree. Underwood went on to promote the degree by saying, “A person who chooses this major can do whatever they want with it.” Underwood listed technical writing, teaching, social media and coding as a few of the jobs that are relevant in the professional field.
The interviewee explained that in their particular job, there is not only writing involved, but coding, designing and editing documents. Although Underwood does not code for Good Grit Magazine, they have done some coding as a freelancer.
During the interview, Underwood explained that the required courses for their Bachelor’s degree provided an opportunity to gain the experience needed for the job at Good Grit Magazine.
Because the internship was geared primarily towards digital media, they were able to use what was learned throughout courses such as Developing Digital Documents to better analyze the material that was going to be distributed or posted onto the internet.
This course allowed them to learn how to compare different font choices, colors and proximities on different documents, making sure that the magazine is sent out looking its absolute best. This course allowed Underwood to become familiar with programs such as Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop which many magazine companies work with, including Good Grit.
Although these skills have helped Underwood reach a stellar career goal, Underwood admits that they have also made it difficult to not feel the need to analyze every document or advertisement they see. Underwood unabashedly stated, “I’ll look at a billboard and think about what I would change to fix it.”
As someone currently taking the Developing Digital Documents course, I had to agree with Underwood that nothing can possibly look the same once you’ve figured out all of the tricks of document design. The interviewee agreed and said that this was in fact the gift and the curse of learning all of these skills. “Once you know how to do it correctly, you notice that the rest of the world does not.”
The interviewee strongly encouraged current English majors to look into the professional writing program. Underwood is the proof that with the right experience and education, your dream job can be the one that you land and thrive at.
Days after interviewing Underwood, they have just obtained a new position at Good Grit Magazine. While keeping most of the same responsibilities, Underwood’s new position now includes managing interns, gift guides, developing campaigns for magazine subscriptions and curating sponsored content.
While still being actively involved in scheduling Facebook, Instagram and the email campaign, Underwood has begun delegating a lot of these responsibilities and tasks to interns to be able to focus on the bigger picture. Good Grit is always looking for hard-working students to fill internship roles.
On behalf of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, we wish Underwood the best of luck in continuing to further their career.
