The Sweetland Minor in Writing is many things. It is comprehensive in it’s coverage of many writing topics and modalities. It is an opportunity for growth outside of one’s Major. It is a chance to embrace and improve one’s creativity and imagination. Most importantly, when compared to many University of Michigan programs, the Sweetland Minor in Writing is small. The Minor in Writing program not only serves to advance your writing abilities, it serves to give you a tight-knit community of students who share a love of writing that exceeds what can be provided within a Major alone. As the Sweetland website so eloquently quotes, “A major is required, but a Minor is a choice.”
The sense of community within the Minor in Writing program extends beyond the individual cohorts into a network of Alumni who continue to serve as a resource for current students. For this blogpost, I had the ~awesome~ opportunity to speak with two such Alums, Jake Lourim and Michael Gawlik. Jake Lourim majored in Economics and now works as a Journalist. Michael Gawlik majored in History and currently works as an event and communication coordinator for the History and Women’s Studies Departments at Michigan. Here is what they had to say…
Why did you decide to join the minor in writing program initially?
Jake: I joined because I always wanted to go into journalism, but with no journalism major at Michigan, I wanted to find some way to involve writing in my curriculum. When I heard about the minor, it sounded great. There were also a couple people older than me at the Michigan Daily who were in it and recommended it, so it worked out really well and I ended up really enjoying it.
Michael: I decided to join because I always liked writing in High School. I was a history major and I missed journalism and creative writing. I saw an advertisement for the program, and I applied and it worked out. I’m very glad it did, and I really liked that the requirements for the Minor are not super strict so it lets you still finish your major while also getting a minor.
Which of the classes that you took for the Minor did you enjoy the most and why?
Jake: My favorite class in the Minor, and maybe my favorite class in all of college, was the Capstone. I had Shelley Manis as my instructor. I loved the Capstone course. I had not taken any class like it, and I thought it was so enriching in so many different ways. The other students in my class were really smart, we had some great discussions. I always felt like I learned something and left the room smarter than when I walked into it each class. I really liked the work that we got to do in the course. I think the capstone course, and especially with my instructor Shelley, is really really strong in that it gives you the best opportunity to really use your talents. Not just me, but everyone in our class found the opportunity to do something that they excelled at and I thought that was the perfect way to culminate what we had learned in college.
Michael: The Gateway course was my favorite. It was a great introduction to the program. I was nervous at first, but my class was a really great group. Gateway was a cool opportunity to try different styles of writing, and the course kind of de-emphasized grades, which gave a lot of room for creativity. I was allowed to stretch the limits, and I ended up doing a podcast for the final project. I also took a fiction writing class with Paul Barren which was great as well and showed me that I am not a fiction writer, but I gained a lot of ideas about how to structure what I write. Great classes all around.
How did your participation in the Minor prepare you for your career?
Jake: I think the Minor, especially the into course and the capstone, more than any other courses at Michigan really prepare you to think about writing. I think that I am more willing to approach the stories that I write now in ways that I would not have outside of the Minor.
Michael: I currently work for the University as an event and communications coordinator for the History and Women’s Studies departments. The Minor has been very helpful with writing for communication-related things, like solicitations. Non-traditional writing was really emphasized in the minor, which helps me now with things like graphic design work and writing on social media. The minor really made me think about how rhetoric works and where the writer is situated between the medium and the audience, and how to balance these two aspects of writing to get a point across.
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 