During the spring 2018 semester, I took a class unlike any other I’d ever experienced.

Initially, I was drawn to the fact it was an honors class above the 300 level, which can be challenging to find. When I read the course description I was immediately fascinated by the idea of “making the book,” because I’d never previously had an opportunity to learn to make books despite a lifetime love for them.

So I signed up for the class, and it was one of the most unfamiliar and labor-intensive endeavors of my life. I’ve learned a lot about trying unusual new skills, even I’m not sure of their immediate use. It’s important sometimes to learn things so you can have them in your toolkit and to just know that if you need to do something unusual (like re-bind a book or make paper) you can.

We learned a wide variety of niche skills: type-setting, bookbinding, cover-making, paper-making, paper-marbling, and more. Most of the skills I learned in this class are kind of like things you put in your bag without knowing why you’re bringing them: you probably won’t need it, but if you do it will be unimaginably useful. For me, this class really related to the Honors pillar of scholarship, because I was learning things for the sake of learning without having an extant end goal for my use of the knowledge.

This class was also new for me in that it was my first art studio class since high school, and it required a lot of work outside. All colleges class require work, but this required a quantity of work and dedicated time that was previously alien to me.

One of these new skills was setting type, which brings me to my artifact for this class. Putting the type in order isn’t particularly exciting to watch, but below is a video of me using an old-fashioned printer from the 1850s in Longwood University’s printing lab.

Because of the intense workload in the class, my project partner and I had to come outside of class on a Sunday to print a haiku (with the type we set). This was an important project to the class because we learned how to set type, pressure print, and use the printing machines.

This particular project helped me grow as a student because it exposed me to many unfamiliar skills, and had me working with someone I didn’t really know at the time handling unfamiliar machinery, which was also a bit of trust exercise for me (we managed to make sure that neither of us got hurt and the machine was fine as well).

Pictures of the type after it was set and the final product we printed are included below.