Class of 2007
Megan Walburn
Cater Society of Junior Fellows Research
I am an English major at Washington College concentrating on journalism, and I applied for a grant from the Cater Society of Junior Fellows to participate in a Study Abroad program for the summer of 2005. The Kiplin Hall program, led by English department chair Richard Gillin, followed the 19th century Romantic poets through England's Lake District and the Scottish Highlands.
The program could be considered any English major's fantasy, but I had a specific objective in mind to gain from Kiplin Hall, which I proposed to the Junior Fellows: "Only through the unique combination of lecture and experiencing the homelands of the poets first-hand can we see both the technical aspects of Romantic poetry and its meaning found in Nature. At the end of my study, I plan to be able to demonstrate the link between the study of poetry and effective contemporary journalism."
By examining the Romantics' poetic devices and story-telling techniques, and by immersing myself in their foreign culture, I gained the skills and confidence to spend the rest of my summer freelance writing for Chesapeake Bay Magazine, my school year editing college publications, and in the future, to contribute to society with better communication of news and information to the public readership.