By Lauren Walters
A gaggle of bright-eyed first-year students walks into a humanities classroom on a Tuesday evening in the fall of 2018. They’ve heard the boasted advantages (real-world publishing experience, student-directed group, leadership opportunities) of the organization they’re about to officially join, and an anxious excitement lingers in their stomachs as they separate the sticky surface of pumpkin bread slices from spongey centers and sneak quick glances at the upperclassmen editors. The advisor of the group, a woman with blue and purple hair wearing a paisley-printed skirt, begins the meeting and the nervous first-years settle in. By the end of the meeting, they can see themselves—older, with more knowledge and experience—sitting in the position of the upperclassmen they are currently looking up at and taking the reins of the organization as editors themselves. This is not the long-winded setup for a joke or a riddle but, rather, the recollection of a starting point, the beginning of the beginning, for most of our recently graduated senior editors. The four years they would serve on staff, however, were very different from those they had imagined, though perhaps no less valuable. Rounding out their tenure, here are what the senior editors recounted as their biggest takeaways from being a part of Green Blotter:
Kayleigh Johnson, Design Editor: Being involved with Green Blotter in general, but especially as a senior editor, made me feel so much more connected to the English department as a whole. I often felt out of the loop with English goings-on because of being a double major and dedicating much of my time, especially in my early college years, to my other major because that’s just how the courses are set up. Green Blotter gave me a chance to reconnect with the other side of my major, especially in later years when much of the editorial staff was also my same grade level.
Leila May, Poetry Co-Editor: The connections, friendships, and hands-on editing experience shaped me into a better leader and reader. Most of my favorite memories involve my Green Blotter team and I wholeheartedly recommend the experience to everyone!
Marah Hoffman, Poetry Co-Editor: It is hard to choose just one takeaway because being a Green Blotter editor was a dream I’d had since my first week at LVC, and, as I anticipated, it has been such a shaping experience. Out of all the takeaways, I would say my biggest one is that creativity can be found in unexpected places. Coming to LVC, I believed in dichotomies. For example, I thought that loving literature and writing meant I hated science and that the same was true of others. But editing for Green Blotter has proven to me that biology majors—and any other major—can write astounding stories. As a global undergraduate magazine, Green Blotter evidences the vibrant spectrum of writers. This, I believe, is one of the magazine’s greatest virtues. I feel blessed to have been witness to this virtue for the past four years.
Lauren Walters, Prose Editor: Serving on the editorial staff of Green Blotter put the idea of being able to roll with the punches into practice. As a group of editors who started college in the fall of 2018 and graduated in the spring of 2022, we found each year of our collegiate education to be novel. Normally after freshman year, college students settle into patterns, schedules, and friend groups, but, for us, there wasn’t ever much of a routine to settle into, and this was also true for our work to produce each edition of Green Blotter. While some of the more foundational steps—reading and selecting pieces, ordering the edition, and working with the publisher—remained necessary parts of the process, their materialization looked different every year. Being a member of Green Blotter from 2018 to 2022 meant doing last-minute layout on the last day of classes before COVID shutdowns, putting our entire 2021 edition together via Zoom meetings and Canvas discussion boards, and—when we finally thought we might be, if not wholly out of the water, at least in the shallow part—navigating a ransomware attack on our publisher. Working as a Green Blotter editor over the past four years, pushed my flexibility to its limits and forced us, as a collective group, to really understand the importance of prioritizing what is most important to us as an organization, especially in times of turbulence and constant change. I think that no matter what we all do going forward or where we end up, we’ll be able to adapt quickly and adeptly to new circumstances, roles, and practices because of our experience with Green Blotter.
Lauren Walters is an English and creative writing major at Lebanon Valley College. Beyond her studies, she also serves as the prose editor for Green Blotter, works as a writing tutor, and creates social media content for various organizations across campus. When she’s not reading and writing for class, you’ll likely find her reading and writing for fun, talking to herself, or having opinions about things at @l_ann18 on Twitter.