Photo Courtesy of Betty Araya

“I’m contemplating my whole life this semester. Originally, I wanted to go into developmental editing for young adult fiction. So kind of, like, improving the content before it is published. Now I’m not so sure. I think I may be a literary agent, but we’ll see. I used to hate reading when I was growing up, but when I was about 8 I read ‘Beezus and Ramona,’ because they were making a movie [based on the book] with Selena Gomez in it, and I actually fell in love with the book and being able to fall into a story. That kind of, like, spurred my reading throughout elementary, middle and high school, as well as [my] college years. And I knew that whatever I did, I wanted to work with books, and make books that could impact people the way they impacted me growing up. I went into tutoring because I’ve always been interested in editorial work, [but] through preparing for the job and actually getting the job, I [realized] it’s not about editing at all. You’re actually working with the student, the author, to help them improve their work, which has definitely been a learning experience for me, especially considering the field I want to go into, knowing that you can’t always edit by rewriting. It’s more of a collaborative work. I hate writing. It frustrates me so much because I have these ideas and then I want to research and make sure that they are absolutely perfect, so I fine-tune, like, everything in one paragraph, and then I’ve spent, like, five hours doing that, and I’ve done nothing! So it’s more of a frustrating process because I want to do so much that I can’t just write and edit later. Reading for me is kind of like an escape. You’re stepping into this world that has been created and escaping from reality, I suppose. And you really get to immerse yourself in that, but you’re also creating it as you read because you’re interpreting it the way you read it. Five people could read the same book and they’re all going to get something different out of it. And with writing, I feel like there’s a lot of pressure, at least for me, to create something as great as the things that I’ve read. And I don’t know, you have this idea in your head, but it’s so much  pressure to put it on paper and make sure other people interpret it the way that you interpret it, because you don’t want your words to get skewed.”