At my core I’ll always be a creative writer first. In the future I plan to get an MFA in creative writing, and ultimately my goal is to teach creative writing at a collegiate level. I had a wonderful and inspirational experience in the English Department, and I learned a plethora of transferable communication skills that I will take with me everywhere. That being said, I’m happy to be exploring other fields.

I’m in the MA program for Emerging Media Design and Development (EMDD) in the Journalism Department here at Ball State. I was initially drawn to this program because we would be studying (among other things) transmedia storytelling, which naturally sounded intriguing to a creative writer. Now I’m studying and learning to create transmedia stories, which are stories that are told over multiple platforms—for a really cool example of this take a look at Lance Weiler’s Pandemic 1.0.

It’s exciting to be studying this fascinating facet of the future of storytelling.

In a class assignment for The Broken Plate, I had to give a presentation about the future of publishing, so I was already aware of self-publishing, ebooks, Issuu, and other opportunities. But the EMDD program has exposed me to a whole new horizon of storytelling that I was entirely unaware of before, and now I’m studying to become an Experience Designer and learning how to create effective transmedia experiences.

Graduate school has reinvigorated my passion for learning and creating, which was always a driving force in my pursuit of higher education. Towards the end of my undergrad I felt pretty burnt out with school. While I was excited to begin graduate school, I was also still wrapped up in a lingering hesitancy about going back to school so soon after graduating. Then the semester started, and I had to hit the ground running. I was thrown into this fast-paced chaos, but it has kick started my drive and inspired me. I am more productive now, both creatively and academically. The workload is daunting at times, but I am thriving.

My advice for creative writing students who are contemplating graduate school—you’re a storyteller in a changing media landscape, and there are great programs inside and outside of English that offer doorways into unique and interesting ways to tell stories. Explore them.