At 5:04 p.m. on May 13, ACES Communication Manager, Kim Lawyer, sent me a Slack message: “I believe that should be everything.”
“Everything,” in this case, refers to the 21 articles, three original infographics, and one podcast produced by the nine members of the ACES 2021 Online student newsroom.
“Everything” encompasses the months of planning, the recruitment of nine college students from five different universities in three different states; the hundreds of hours of meetings and trainings, and dozens of iterations of the publication work cycle: submissions, draft reviews, editing rounds and rewrites (and resubmissions, editing rounds and rewrites and resubmissions, editing rounds and rewrites...).
“Everything” includes dozens of interviews via video calls, phone calls, emails, and even Twitter. We really appreciate the wonderful editors who took the time to interact with the students.
And this year, “everything” happened 100% online. Most of us haven’t ever met in person.
We volunteer for “everything” because we believe that ACES members are doing good work. We believe that language is both the source and the vehicle of culture, and that ACES conferences are the best places to be for anyone who cares about language.
Many of the students volunteer to be closer to you, ACES members. They are studying your work because they most want to be the type of person you would want to work with or to hire—not just in a general sense of getting a job after graduation, but in the very specific sense that your work has changed their lives in some way. They admire your work, and they admire you, editors.
Students request interviews because they need the information for their stories, but also because they really want an excuse to interact with editors meaningfully. The “meaningfully” here is quite important. They want to write good stories to impress editors, to help editors to promote their work, and to serve the wider ACES community by providing valuable information.
If you would like to support the students in these noble efforts, here are some ways you can help:
On May 24—at 12:56 p.m. to be exact—Kim sent the email that it’s time to start planning for ACES 2022.
We can’t wait to work with you again!
