Dana Scott / Winonan
Abby Peschges, a graduate student and assistant at Winona State University, shared how her opportunities and experiences on campus helped her shape what she aspires to do in the future.
Peschges described herself as indecisive when listing all the majors she considered during her undergraduate degree.
She started as a social work major, because foster care has always been important to her. However, after looking at the classes, Peschges did not think she could emotionally handle the job, but is still very passionate about helping children in the foster care system. She closely follows Together We Rise, a non-profit organization whose goal is to improve the lives of children in foster care by raising money.
She also considered a recreation tourism and therapeutic recreation (RTTR) major for a while. She then declared an English major with intentions of also declaring a psychology minor. Peschges had hoped to edit psychology textbooks, because she has always loved the subject and the topic of power dynamics and where power is placed.
Peschges finally declared a double major in English literature and language and creative writing, and graduated with her undergraduate degree in May of 2014.
While working toward undergraduate degree, Peschges wrote for The Winonan. For a semester she wrote an “Ask Abby” column, and later wrote mainly news stories. Peschges became the copy editor for the paper, a position she served in for a year and a half.
“We would celebrate when there was a reason to use an oxford comma,” Peschges said about her favorite aspect of editing articles.
Currently, she is a graduate student in the English literature and language program. She is also working as the graduate assistant to Director of Communications Andrea Northam.
Peschges started working in the communications office as a staff writer, writing press releases in the spring of her junior year, after writing an article for The Winonan about President Olson.
Then she became the lead student writer for a year, and was offered a graduate assistant position and decided to stay at Winona State for her Master’s degree.
She said writing press releases is different than writing one’s own stories or poems, but she enjoyed getting the chance to work with marketing and promotion.
She also said she found writing press releases to be similar to writing articles for The Winonan because they are both about finding a hook and how to spin a story or event to get others interested about it.
As the graduate assistant, Peschges’s main task is gathering the information for, writing and sending out the Winona State update everyday.
Her favorite aspect of her current job is workshopping with undergraduate student workers to create the best material they can, which connects back to Peschges’s interest in editing and publishing. Peschges aspires to work in publishing and editing, and eventually get her Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry.
In 2013, during her junior year, Peschges got involved with the campus literary magazine, Satori, which students receive course credit for participating in.
“It’s not just for the English department,” Peschges said regarding Satori. “It’s for the whole campus; it’s free to students and I think it offers a good opportunity.”
Peschges worked on Satori’s staff for three years. During her first year, she volunteered as the art and design editor and worked with the editor-in-chief on the layout of the magazine.
The following year she was the poetry editor. Last year, she took Satori as an independent study as a graduate assistant and went headfirst into teaching herself how to use InDesign as the editor-in-chief.
The sustainability committee made donations to Satori to aid in the magazine being printed on recycled paper for the 2015 edition.
“I loved last year; it was so much fun,” Peschges said. “I’m really excited that we used recycled paper for the magazine, I wanted to see us making improvements.”
For Peschges, the most challenging aspect of being editor-in-chief for Satori was not getting to create the book exactly the way she wanted.
“Not getting my way to complete my vision for the book,” Peschges said. “But that’s how the world is.”
Peschges expressed how her favorite aspect of being part the process of publishing Satori was having a physical representation of all the hours of work put in.
“I made this,” Peschges said. “It’s like being a parent.”
Satori is currently accepting student submissions of poetry, prose and photography until Feb. 14, and submissions can be sent to: [email protected].
