Since before I could read on my own, books were always important to me. As I got older, my passion for them grew. When I was studying at Queens College, I took some interesting classes. I remember taking a Victorian Literature class where I fell in love with Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, and where I discovered that, although I loved Wuthering Heights, I couldn’t stand Jane Eyre (I have still never been able to finish reading it!). I had written essays about books in high school, but in college it was different. I was encouraged to formulate my own ideas and do research to prove it, researching in a way that I never had to do before. Your Dreams class opened me up to an even deeper level of thinking because it had never occurred to me to pair dream theorists with literature (I still like Freud better than Jung!). I remember sitting among a mass amount of papers, all of which had circled quotes on them for our final paper and just loving every minute of it. Also, in your class we were required to do little online blogs about each week’s reading – it was another way to exercise our minds and really think about our opinions, and how was the best way to convey them, especially with everyone in the class being able to read them and comment. I feel like it has helped me with the blog that I write in a way. I do always write my opinion on things, but I don’t write in a stream of consciousness style, rather, I really sit and think about what I am writing and what I want to get across. My time at Queens College not only helped me expand and discover new genres, but it also helped me to be able to think in a different way. I have always felt like I could get lost in a book, and I often do. They transport you to worlds that you would never have known, experiences that you never would have had. It was when I was there that I figured out what I wanted to do with my life (and my English degree).
I work at Simon & Schuster, one of the big 5 in book publishing. My dream, to work in the book field was something that I worked really hard to pursue and something that took me years to break into (it’s a tough industry). I work in subrights, which is more of a sales position. I really want to work in editorial, and I’ll get there, but subrights is interesting because I work with people in every department in the building. I use the skills I learned at Queens College daily in writing and pitching books to different companies to sell them. And the way I write and interpret books gave me a great edge to obtaining my current position. A few years after graduating from Queens College, I took classes at NYU SCPS where I obtained a certificate in book publishing. It was in one of those classes that my blog was discovered and that is now the imprint that I work at.
If I had any advice to give, it would be this. Never give up on your dreams, whatever they are, whatever your passion is. Never give up. I graduated from Queens College in Spring 2010, but it wasn’t until the Fall of 2014, nearly three and a half years later, that I started working in book publishing. There were many times that I wanted to give up, many times that I thought that maybe I wasn’t meant to work in the publishing world. Hundreds of jobs that I applied to and never heard back from. Jobs that I interviewed for and wasn’t hired. There were many times that I sat down and asked myself if pursing this career was really what I wanted to do. And, at the end of the day, I knew that it was. Knowing what you want to do with your life is huge, but having the courage and will power to pursue it even when it feels like you’re getting no where is just as important if not more. Have the strength to not give up and you will get what you want in life.
