This week marks the beginning of Submission Evaluations. Each staff member was given one to two sample pieces to evaluate this week. I used focused on literary criticism for my sample assignmenr. Our editors with BePress access will be meeting on Friday to assign submission evaluations to each staff member. Even though I will not have BePress access for this evaluation round, I will be attending the meeting so I can learn the ropes for next year.
I’ve been feeling like I haven’t had much to do, so I spoke with our faculty advisor after Monday’s meeting about taking on more tasks. Currently, we only have one person doing the two person job of Social Media Managing. Because of my interest in using social media as a marketing tool and my experience in this field, I volunteered to help Ciera with the role. She has agreed to let me help with our Instagram page and to utilize my campus resources to make our pages more discoverable. We will be meeting on Friday to hammer out a few details and figure out how to divide tasks. Additionally, I have agreed to evaluate our course syllabus to begin thinking of changes for next year and to provide feedback on staff blogs. These will be ongoing tasks throughout the semester that will begin this week.
I already have a few ideas in the works based on feedback from my fellow staff members. One of the biggest topics of feedback has been the frequency with which we are required to post blogs. The current system requires us to post a blog related to our course readings each Monday before class and a reflective blog each Wednesday before class. While I understand the reasoning for these specific deadlines, I believe a few concerns could be alleviated by pushing the reflection deadline to Friday. Posting a reflection blog at the end of the week rather than in the middle might also feel more organic, especially given that most of our work is done outside our meeting time. Adding more time between posts could also relieve some of the stress staff are feeling in the middle of the week and allow us to dedicate that time to the journal. I would keep the reading-based post deadline on Mondays, even though that only puts two days between a reflection and a reading. Because those two days are the weekend, they feel much more doable than busy weekdays. It also puts the week off to a productive start when we begin by focusing on the more abstract aspects of literary magazines. This abstract also allows us to focus on theory we can put into practice, then reflect on how these theories affected our work.
Sydney Hubbel 