The most frustrating/challenging part of the internship so far has been trying to create an author’s booklet. I have never created a booklet, at least not since I was 12, and I’m only just now realizing the amount of creativity that it takes to form a whole book. I understand now why most books by a publisher have a standardized formatting, coming up with a new one for every book would be hell.

I didn’t expect making a booklet to be easy, but I didn’t expect it to be so difficult either, if that makes sense. I expected to be able to put the information down and then get the formatting to make sense generally easily. That’s not what happened. Firstly, I have to gather information about many organizations, awards/scholarships, and higher education programs, and then concisely summarize the information in one or two sentences. That was really hard to do at first, but I slowly got the hang of it after realizing what was important information and filtering out what wasn’t. It still takes a significant amount of time to do though.

Then there’s the issue of formatting. Some sections look better with one format, since more information is provided, and others look shabby and messy since very little information is needed so the original formatting is a poor fit. I’ve realized that I haven’t been very observant of the structure of the world around me, I just take it for granted. So when I end up in a situation like this, I don’t have any past knowledge to pull from. It’s crazy how much about book production I never noticed (headers and footers are important!).

Despite these challenges and frustrations, I think this experience is rewarding and helpful. Having to create an entire booklet from scratch is beneficial because I am learning through experience how to make a booklet. Having to push through these difficulties has taught me to be more observant in the future and think critically about why things are formatted the way they are. It has also taught me how to concisely and professionally present and summarize information in a way that is helpful to readers. Further, it has taught me to write and think from an informative perspective rather than a creative perspective. For these reasons, I am grateful for this experience since I think it will help me approach future endeavors with a greater skillset.