Conclusions

A number of lessons have been stated in the previous posts, all of which are very true. I can only hope the production of the journal was as pleasant an experience for everyone else involved as it was for me. I think that the group we worked with relied upon one another heavily. Responsibilities were divided among us and yet the process was very much an integrated effort with  everyone in some way taking part in the work of everyone else. I think that a happy disposition and positive working environment was critical to our success. I feel luck also played its own role in the process, with funding coming though in the end, with so many submissions coming in etc, etc. Luck also may have seemed plentiful because of our group’s ability to over come obstacles with little discord and plenty of can do attitude. I think the lessons learned from the group dynamics we had this year are the ones, which will be the most beneficial in the future and are the ones that made the undertaking so fulfilling 

Web design

When we first took- on the project of creating the Namaste journal there were a few initial problems. Our largest hurdle was the issue of funding. We were nervous that the student government funding which had been available in the past would not be able to be counted on this year. We over came this by trying to focus on a web based release of the journal which would be cheaper and yet equally as accessible in the age of Facebook and e-mail. As mentioned before a friend of mine Pete had been working on web design and graphic design here at Uconn for a number of semesters. I had recently seen some of his work and was really impressed. I contacted him to see if he would be interested in helping us and he was quick to sign up. The process of mediating the organization of the journal and its subsequent publication to the web became one of the most interesting elements of my involvement in the process.  The little I knew about creating a human rights journal seemed like a wealth of knowledge compared to what I know about web design. However while I’m no more able to make a web site now then 10 weeks ago, sitting though the process with Pete gave me a familiarity and an immense respect for his line of work. I guess in a way the online publication of my reflections is a slight head nod to the amount of appreciation I gained for what a great tool for the dissemination of knowledge the Internet has become. Becoming involved in fields I was unaccustomed with and learning though integration into those fields became a strong testament towards learning though doing. 

Networking

Again the power of asking comes up in this reflection as well. Asking however is combined with networking. I found again that having a wide variety of acquaintances and contacts makes the process of creating a large project like Namaste much easier. Many of the people we ended up working with were people we knew well before Namaste. These people were often times willing to go out of their way to assist us. Teddy, one of the staff, had become a friend of mine a few weeks before this year’s Namaste started and he came to be a very helpful in the completion of the journal. A friend of mine, Pete Maniscalco, a graphic design major in the Uconn art program, became instrumental in the publication of a web-based release of the journal. Stefanie’s friend put together our wonderful cover at little or no request.  On top of friends and acquaintances a network began to be built around the journal itself.  Many of the supervisors we had, gave us access to people who could help us immensely. For example Rachel was willing to call the Andrew Bacon, who had created the human right institute’s website. After her initial contact we had web space in a number of hours.  The journal really took on a life of its own and although things were difficult at times, I felt the enthusiasm about the idea and direction of the journal was enough to perpetuate its own creation and we were merely stewards of the whole process. 

Submissions

In the submission process I began to teach one of the more important lessons though the process of putting the journal together, the power of asking. Once we had canvassed for submissions we awaited their arrival. Luckily for us arrive they did. We combined a few techniques in order to get ample submissions first was asking in quantity, second was asking with purpose and third was asking in the right place. Let me explain those. When we asked in quantity we made sure a vast number of people were alerted to the possibility to getting published in an undergraduate journal. Speaking in front of classrooms, list servers and flyers were all part of this approach and are what I would say the typical approach. In our second approach made sure to ask with purpose, if we had a close friend who was doing what we knew to be good work we personally asked them to submit. If we knew someone who had been on a trip we asked if they could write something up for us. Asking individually gives the request a personal aspect based on you conveying your interest in some one else’s work, which is a great technique fore getting submissions. Lastly asking the right places is critical. When we stated we wanted personal reflections on the trips people had taken, Stefanie came up with the brilliant idea of asking the study abroad office to see if its student participants would be willing to submit to our journal. We got two or three good pieces out of that idea alone. The number of submissions was huge this year compared to years past and I think it is a testament to the power of asking. Asking intelligently and creatively makes it such that asking alone can open many doors which were once closed.  

Direction

After being accepted as a co-editor of Namaste, I went on to meet the other two internees, Stefanie and Komal. We sat down for our  first meeting on January 26^th in the opening of the spring semester. We talked about the traditional aspects of getting the journal completed. We knew we would have to publicize for submissions, which would require flyers, listserv e-mails and speaking in front of large lecture halls. An early lesson I learned was that often time asking at the individual level worked more effectively then asking around at mass. We were lucky to have may friends in the human rights and related fields, which meant we also had a generous pool of perspective authors to ask for work from. During this first meeting we also talked about the direction we wanted to take the journal. We wanted accessibility and connectivity in our publication. The suggestion was made to try and involve the arts and something we began calling “personal reflection.” Over the winter break I had taken a trip to Rwanda as part of the Unesco program. One of the most beneficial aspects of the trip arose upon my return. Friends and family were eager to hear about my travels and took stock in my stories. They were vicariously learning about human rights though listening to my travel stories. I saw this as a great medium to get the element of understanding and connectivity between author and reader that we wanted in our journal. Including dairy like reflections on influential human rights related trips would become a focus of our edition of Namaste. 

Beginnings

My path towards Namaste started in a classroom my junior year at the university. Prof. Emma Gilligan was Teaching Genocide in the 20^th century and I was sitting in her classroom, taking part in my first human rights class. I think originally I was taking the class to fulfill a political science requirement, however by the end I had been effectively re-directed towards human rights. Her class was filled with free and open discussion on an assortment of human rights related topics and these discussions helped to foster a curiosity and eventually a passion in the human rights field. Following this curiosity I took a few more human rights/political science cross over classes and became more and more engrossed in the human rights field. Then while in Prof. Shareen Hertel’s competitive human rights class, she took the opening of class one day to express the existence and more so the merit of the universities human rights minor. I decided to look into it and went over to the Dodd center, were I was pleased to find out I had three of the four required classes done. I decided to fit one more into my schedule and then start looking into what they were calling “internship” opportunities. A few days later with few exciting ideas, I called up a friend and fellow human rights minor Chris Martin. Chris told me about the journal and how it was a fun if demanding option in the field of human rights internships. He told me that the journal offered a lot of creative freedom and had tangible end results. Both of these were enough to sell me and I went back to the Human rights institute and asked what I needed to do to get on board. After sending in and getting an application accepted that last steps of a long journey towards the journal were

completed.

 

Bio and Introduction

My name is Andrew Christie and I am currently an 8^th semester senior at the University of Connecticut. I’ll be graduating in May with a major in history and a minor in human rights. As part of my human rights minor there is an internship component which is necessary for the completion of the degree. I chose to take on an editing position at the universities yearly human rights journal titled Namaste. The following blog is composed of compiled and synthesized reflections from a journal kept though out my experience of helping to create the journal.

I'ed like to also make mention that this narrative is not a complete recollection of the creation of this years journal. My input was one small bit of a much larger project.  The projects completion was only possible with  Stef, Komal, and our student and supervising staff.  Thanks and congrats

-Andrew 

-Andrew