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Open in new tab Honors English 400 was by far, the most challenging honors course I have taken. Not because of the coursework or the professor, but solely because it made me come out my comfort zone in the work that we were doing.
The approach that my class took to the capstone Honors course was through creating a magazine. This consisted of articles that were written about residents of FarmVille that were children when the Prince Edward County schools closed in the 1960s. Each of us in the honors class was paired with a student from a photography class that was paired with us. We we each assigned a person, who we were responsible for contacting, interviewing, photographing, and creating both an entire 4-page magazine layout and an exhibition spread to be presented at the Moton Museum.
I have never had any experience with magazine editing before and definitely do not think of myself as a creative writer. This class was a big challenge for me not only in that sense, but also when it came to working with someone I had never met before, who wasn’t even in the same class as me. After the interview, we went through numerous drafts of our article, made so many changes in the weekly writers and photography critiques we went though, and had to come up with a final project that pleased our classmates, professors, and most importantly, our “storyteller”.
In the end of the class I reflected on what it taught me about myself. I of course learned a lot about the magazine process and how everything comes together, but I learned how to work as a team with someone I barely knew, and I learned how important this was to the FarmVille community. When we debuted the magazine at the Moton that day, there were so many people that came solely to get their hands on a copy of the magazine. The history we were portraying and the stories we were telling have a large impact on the Farmville community, and so many people love to read it.
The way it impacted me the most was learning how to write for someone else. I am so used to writing a research paper or a reflection that solely has to do with me, no one else. In this class, I had to learn how to write for someone else; I had to learn to tell their story. I had to involve them in the entire process and if they didn’t like something, I had to fix it, because it was not my story to tell. This may have been the most challenging, but it was by far the most rewarding class I have taken at Longwood. All the late night edits and numerous meetings with my partner were nothing when it came to the smile that our finished product brought to our storyteller.
Attached is the finished layout of our storyteller, Ann Simpson.