Introducing the YSW Spring 2023 Intern

 

Hello! My name is Alex Merritt (they/them), and I am the new intern for Young Scholars in Writing. I am a junior Professional Writing major with Communications and Music minors at York College of Pennsylvania. I am very involved around campus as a Student Ambassador, Orientation Coordinator, Writing Tutor, and Underwriting Director for WVYC, our college radio station. When I’m not attending classes or work, I enjoy reading, listening to music in various languages, and playing with my cat.

I never planned to go into writing after high school and actually started at YCP as a Music Industry and Recording Technology major. I have always been passionate about music, so I assumed it would be my perfect career path. However, I found myself falling more in love with the classes that required me to write about composers, concerts, and music genres. I realized that my love for music would be better preserved as a hobby and that my skill and love for writing were the keys to a happy future, so I declared a major in Professional Writing.

With the primary goal of helping other writers, I have since been climbing through my degree, intending to become an editor. Many of the classes I’ve taken have introduced me to the diversity of writers, the ins and outs of the language, and the analytical skills necessary to understand various writing. One of my favorite and most memorable classes has been Professional Editing, where I learned the techniques and terminology of editors currently in the field. This class is also where I was introduced to Young Scholars in Writing when I helped edit one of the pieces in Volume 20 by Mercedes Sarah called “Covert Resistance To #Metoo: The Uptake Of Social Change And Public Anxiety In The Men’s Lifestyle Magazine Cover Genre.” The assignment not only brought joy for more editing experience but for the chance to intern in an editorial position with an academic journal.

I look forward to all of the experience and skills I will gain by working with YSW and am very grateful for this opportunity. Something I love most about the journal is its goal to allow undergraduate writers to publish their work and help writers by offering resources throughout the publication process and beyond. I am excited to be a part of the peer-review process for developing a new volume and hope that I can start helping writers as I would like to in the future.

After college, I plan to continue my education and get my masters in linguistics. I have always been interested in language and language learning and spend much of my free time exposing myself to new languages and cultures. A masters in linguistics will allow me to dive deeper into my English studies as well as other languages and will continue to prepare me for a career as an editor.