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.