Cheers!
What I love about Scotland is the fact that people give thanks to bus drivers when they get off the bus; you have a destination, you get there safe, so you appreciate the drivers work. The best appreciation I could imagine to receive as a – hopefully soon-to-be – employee in the publishing industry, would be the knowledge that I helped making somebody’s day with a great book.
My undergrad studies in English literature and language – which I did back at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg ,Germany – were pretty much based on theoretical knowledge, I would be lost in the working world after my Bachelor’s degree to be honest. A few weeks into the Publishing Studies programme at the University of Stirling and I already feel much more confident and eager to get out there – to put in my two pennies worth. My focal point in publishing right at this moment would be children’s and young adult’s literature; after I graduated from school, I volunteered to do a social year at an integrated kindergarten in Bremen where I was in charge to help a deaf three-year-old boy through his day. Seeing him and the other children interact, him teaching all of us his language and ways to communicate with him, simply amazed me. Children are great people. And what I wish for is to contribute in the process of them becoming great adults.
You might ask yourself now, why not work at a kindergarten then, why do I choose to work in publishing? To be honest, I don’t really have an answer to that question. It is a gut feeling. Ever since 11th grade I knew that I wanted to work in the media. It’s got to be a virus of my generation; “What do you want to do as your professional career after school?” – “Well, I don’t know, probably something with media.” Well, yes, I’m one of those guys. So, I was never really sure whether all this was just some mainstream interest I shared, until I did an internship at the Schardt publishing company last year for four months. Ever since, I know that it is not mainstream, it is my stream I am following. And luckily it brought me here, to Stirling.