By Tim Melton
Hello, everyone – welcome to The Scroll, the official blog of the English Department of Elon University! This inaugural post will be our first edition of English Works, where we catch up with English students in the midst of their various internships and/or jobs, and discuss how they are taking their college studies to the next level.
One of the most exciting aspects of an English degree is its versatility – you never really know where it’s going to take you. For senior Abbey Foucart (PWR), her determination and hard work brought her right to the nation’s capital. This summer, she’s been interning at the Office of Public Affairs, in Washington, D.C. To find out about Abbey’s experience and how she has managed to connect it with her English work at Elon, I caught up with her to ask her a few questions:
What is your position? Can you list some of your responsibilities?
I’m working as an intern for Immigration Customs Enforcement’s Office of Public Affairs. Since starting, I have been responsible for many different things, notably drafting social media content and editing news releases.
Where did you first hear about your internship opportunity, and what made you want to apply?
My father works for ICE, and through him I heard about OPA and the kind of work they do. I wanted to work for them because I’m really interested in taking raw information and making it accessible to the public.
What’s been your favorite part of your internship so far? What do you think has challenged you most?
My favorite part of the internship and also the biggest challenge so far has been producing content that serves a larger purpose. I’ve practiced and learned about professional writing in my classes, but rarely is my work seen beyond the classroom. It is immensely fulfilling to see content that I’ve edited or created online, but it’s also challenging. I have to make sure that whatever I’m putting out there represents both me and the organization properly.
Do you think your coursework as an English major has influenced how you approach your internship position? If so, how?
I see many connections between my coursework and my internship. Most of my professional writing classes center on the theory of rhetoric, and how to keep in mind things like audience and context when crafting an argument. When looking at my organization’s webpage, for example, I must determine whether the intended audience would respond well to the information on it.
On a more specific note, the CUPID Studio coursework is very relevant to this internship. In that course, we were able to craft Twitter and Facebook posts and also to research the most effective ways to do so. I rely on this experience while working at my internship.
How do you think your internship might affect your work going into the next school year and beyond?
I think that this internship is giving me a great deal of confidence in my professional writing skills. Being trusted with the responsibility to work on important documents makes me feel secure in my abilities and will certainly impact my future writing abilities positively.
Congratulations on your success so far, Abbey, and good luck going into your final year at Elon. Stay tuned for more student and professor profiles featuring Elon’s English department members!
Tim Melton is a senior English major (Literature/Creative Writing) from Mooresville, NC. In addition to gathering and posting content on The Scroll, Tim manages the English departments social media pages, consults for the University Writing Center, and writes opinions columns for the school newspaper, The Pendulum.