Do humanities courses help with graduate students' creative writing internships?

Internships and Humanities Courses: a Winning Combination

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Like many graduate students studying creative writing, I apprenticed myself to literary magazines and presses to better understand how a poem was published. These experiences taught me a side of poetry I wasn’t learning about in graduate seminars.

By the time I was a professor, I’d served on mastheads of various literary publications as a preliminary reader, editorial assistant, associate editor, and editor in chief. I’d learned to build run sheets, navigate WordPress, make Instagram posts on Canva, and communicate with authors about book design. I was anxious to bring my professional experiences into the classrooms where I taught literature and writing to students in English, history, art and design, education, and communication.

Students sometimes struggle with confidence in their skills, even though they value their faculty and enjoy their courses. I thought that learning about my experiences would help them. After all, I knew that I’d liked the feeling of working with my hands to build an issue or edit a manuscript. Such work felt like an accomplishment after the emotional labor that went on behind the scenes—something students often experience in their solitary work of producing papers that never go beyond the teacher’s desk. Did my students have a different expereience?

Q&A

1. Could my students experience what it was like to be a writer, editor, publisher, or designer, regardless of their plans to specialize in creative writing?

2. Could they develop much needed skills by participating in an internship with a literary magazine or press—skills they couldn’t necessarily acquire in their traditional seminar courses?

3. If so, what were these skills, and how would I be able to identify them?

To answer this question, I interviewed four recent graduates—Mac, Frank, Sara and Jo—by asking them the same set of questions about their internships with the following publications—internships for which I had served as their supervisor:

• Lit Works (English Department Blog)

• Archway Review (Student-run Literary Magazine)

• Cider Press Review (Journal of Contemporary Poetry)

Graduate perspective #1 technical writing

Mac said that their technical writing course was instrumental to their internship experience because that class collaborated with a literature seminar to curate a prototype literary magazine publishing ecopoetry and ecocriticism. In other words, a prototype experience offered by two collaborating professors scaffolded their internship with a student-run literary magazine. Also, a semester of learning technical writing skills in a separate course prepared them to serve as editor in chief of a student-run literary magazine.  

Graduate perspective #2 humanities +poetry

Frank said his humanities courses helped him understand why people needed poetry: “I felt like it was my obligation to make as many groups feel seen and heard [as possible] because these poems are the type of work that can make people feel like maybe they aren’t alone.” His sense of literary citizenship was broadened by interning with Cider Press Review.

Graduate perpective #3 hands on learning

Sara said her humanities courses helped her write blog posts with “substance.” The substance came from connecting with other people’s experiences. When Sara interned for our English Department blog, Lit Works, she reviewed a TV show and poetry collection, and interviewed the author of a graphic novel.

"Most of my writing before the internship was a product of a syllabu," said Sara, "but with Lit Works, this was my first time writing about topics I autonomously pursued. This helped me stretch my creative-writing limbs to subjects outside of my day-to-day classes.”

Graduate perspective #4 job training

Jo valued a practicum in literary magazine publishing that built a foundation for the experience of interning for a small, independent press. "Through that practicum, I gained experience with being a respectful and mindful editor,” said Jo. That respect was woven through their communication with other editors who sometimes had different opinions about a piece submitted for publication. Jo was also responsible for promoting a book launch, and used their preexisting professional rapport with an author to approach that author about promoting their new book on social media.  

Ready for the workplace

All four of my former interns gained skills from their internship, only some of which they could have acquired in traditional seminar courses. But in addition to basic skills such as critical thinking, and reading comprehension as well as cross-functional social skills, my former interns reported that they gained skills in leadership, were more prepared for their careers, and learned to communicate with a team.

Other arguments about the value of internships for humanities students support these students’ reflections on their experiences. For example, research by Lillian Wilson on the public humanities shows that organizations working with humanities interns are more likely to hire them in the future. Edward J. Balleisen and Rita Chin reinforce the value of internships for humanities students when they write that experiential learning helps their students stand out because they can reference “concrete roles and tangible achievements” when applying for jobs after an undergraduate or graduate degree.

My former interns also saw their internships in relation to their humanities courses, which helped them convey the value of their major, minor, or liberal arts degree to prospective employers. As NACE Journal reports in response to employers’ feedback, companies want to hire graduates who are “adaptive, curious, creative, and flexible.” The combination of internships and humanities courses allows students practice with being lifelong learners

Professor's reflections: teaching students how to think

The first benefit of these interviews came from reconnecting with former students. The four alumni I contacted had all been delightful interns with unique strengths. Talking with them over email and Google Docs reminded me that their college courses first and foremost taught them to think. The interviews also brought to the fore the fact that some of my former interns had learned the importance of communicating across multiple modalities. They had a sense that leading a team required more than just in-person meetings or an email group in Outlook. Their tone mattered, too, especially when prodding a classmate to do their part or sending rejection notices. They had to keep their team of editors motivated or respond to an author in a respectful manner. 

What was even more interesting, though, was that my former interns didn’t see their internship experiences in a vacuum, separate from their college coursework. Especially insightful was the range of their responses about the connection between the humanities courses they had taken and what they learned from their internship.

Beth McDermott

Beth McDermott, Associate Professor of English at the University of St. Francis, is a Center for Humanities Communication Associate. (Bio)