People always talk about “doing what you love” or “finding your passion.” Poetic and valid, yes, but the process is not exactly one-size-fits-all. You can’t discover your passion from a Google search. I came to Cedarville undeclared—I had no idea what to do with myself. I wasn’t overly worried, but I was on the edge of my proverbial seat, waiting for what the next chapter in my story might be about. Turns out, the Lord wrote it better than I ever could have.

I have never been very confident in my grammar, spelling, or punctuation skills. I remember sitting in my 4th grade grammar class and absolutely dreading having to recall the definition of a predicate out loud. In my mind, editing was equivalent to math: it was confusing, rigid, and frankly, very boring. And little did I know that editing would be a central part of my future career path and, ironically, one of my favorite things to do.

As a freshman, I thought that I was sentenced to scrubbing dishes in the dining hall for my next four years at Cedarville. I listened to upper-level Professional Writing and Information Design students talk about client projects and job offers from organizations. I knew that an internship would eventually come, but I had no idea where to start.

It was my sophomore year, and the first day of a class called Professional Portfolio Development. The professor informed us that we would be participating in mock interviews: first with our fellow classmates, then with some of PWID’s board members, both on the phone and in person. I was 17 years old. I had only ever worked online, aside from my job at a bakery. I felt about as inexperienced as one could be.

“You and your partner will be creating a cookbook in print form and web form with Adobe InDesign,” my Professor told us as I sat in my Production Tools and Document Design class. The first time I opened InDesign, I stared at the blank document and felt overwhelmed by the huge number of tools that stared back at me. I wondered how I’d ever learn to use the program in several weeks and actually create a cookbook at the same time.

In that moment as I stood in front of my professor, I knew I was over-committing. He offered me the opportunity to work on a professional client project. This specific client was the nursing department at Cedarville University, and I would be creating a template for their quarterly newsletter.