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Calling all writers, readers, and creators! Consider this an official invitation from the Department of English at Huntington University to sign up for StoryCon 2024. Whether you enjoy writing, telling, or hearing stories, each form is important.

There are several offices operating out of the lower level of Livingston Hall. I belong to the content creation team in the Office of University Relations. The job of content creator obviously involves — well — creating content. However, the position is also content researching, editing, and archiving.

Anyone working to earn a bachelor’s degree in communications, journalism, or public relations has the opportunity to work alongside almost any field. Every business, every speaker needs a way to reach the public.

Picture yourself as a content creator or performer sometime in the not-too-distant future. A time when you can see your own name written alongside the content creators and performers you currently admire.

Excitement. Curiosity. Nervousness.These were all emotions I felt attending my first StoryCon at Huntington University. Dr. Todd Martin, director of StoryCon, had hyped up the event and suggested I attend. As a newer English major, I felt like I would be the least knowledgeable person in the room and the least qualified to take part in the making and telling of stories. However, I was curious about the poetry workshop, and with a free lunch involved, I couldn’t say no. I apprehensively registered for StoryCon 2022, and looking back, I am so thankful I did.

If you have the traits of a good journalist, I invite you to come and major in journalism at Huntington University. We’ll give you the same training and education we gave Shelly Bradbury, one of our journalism graduates. When in our department, she wrote and edited stories for our campus newspaper — just as students are doing even now online (take a look). After a year of Bradbury’s first stint as a newspaper reporter, she emailed us to say that her “editors seem to agree that writing is one of my strengths, and I've got to guess that's in part because of the classes…where we scrutinized each and every word.” (We make our students true wordsmiths!)

As someone who writes frequently, I have storytelling skills that I think can be useful in learning more about someone’s authentic life story and how God, their Author, is writing through them. With the stage of life that most students are in, a simple way to learn more about someone is to ask about their major. To get a person’s full, meaningful story, consider using some of these questions or refining some of the questions you may have asked in the past.

Learning a new language is a difficult challenge for many people. When someone moves to a new culture with a new language, this challenge impacts every area of life. The ability, or inability to effectively communicate, affects how we learn, work, shop, socialize, and so much more. How broadly language and communication is ingrained in our lives also appears in the various ways you can serve with TESOL training. You can work in a variety of settings and all over the world. Anywhere people are trying to learn English as a secondary means of communication.

As a content developer, I’m living the dream of getting paid to write. I have a traditional 8-to-5 office job that includes lots of emails, Word documents, and meetings, and I like it that way. In a given day, I could write a five-word billboard slogan and a 650-word feature story for a magazine, but whatever the word count, I am putting my skills as a former English major to work daily.