Week One: Introductions [Michelina Tersigni, W14]

Hello! I’m Michelina (pronounced Mick-uh-lee-nuh, but you can call me Mic or Lina if you consider those easier, and no, I wasn’t named after the frozen dinners!); I’m twenty-two and majoring in Professional Writing, and in recent years I’ve become incredibly fascinated with classic literature — think Austen, Shakespeare, Greek mythology — but not exclusively in their classic forms: I’m much more interested in readapting them for modern audiences, with more diverse and progressive narratives. I’m not sure if there’s a specific field name for that, so more broadly let’s say I’m into creative writing and editing.

I’ve played around with RealtimeBoard, which allows you to create what are essentially visual mind maps for projects and stories, but RefWorks and Zotero each look extremely useful, particularly because a research method I’ve always struggled with is keeping my resources in a unified place.

When it comes to research, I’ll admit I’ve overall become somewhat lazy — it’s been a year since I’ve cracked open a physical book (for research purposes), much preferring the ease of not having to leave my keyboard, but I’d like to get back into an approach that includes practical and hands-on library time. I’m constantly researching reviews of creative works, both in a school and social context, because as I said earlier, I want to be a writer that makes more diverse and progressive spaces, and I like to know where people are feeling representation lacking in fiction and non-fiction so that I can hopefully, one day down the line, contribute writing that makes people feel as though they can see themselves reflected.

I have zero podcast experience, but I’m actually quite excited! Intimidated, too, but I think it helps that there are so many stages to the project — once you have your content, the stages allow you to fine-tune clarity, both in structure and delivery. I speak extremely fast, so I think one of my biggest challenges might be developing a “radio voice” that people understand.

I've narrowed down the topic choices into the three shows that I'm considering:

• Grammar Girl: The PRWR program requires taking a Grammar & Proofreading course, and I found it super challenging but super informative — there were terms for techniques I didn’t even know existed, and I’d love to help teach some of them.
• Lexicon Valley: Word and phrase usage is such a rich thing that it’s almost boundless, because every culture or generation can use something differently, and it would be so interesting to hone in on just one and extend branches from its roots.
• Under the Influence: Along with an interest in words comes an interest in rhetoric, and advertising is an area that uses persuasion in everything it does, right?