Hey, readers! My name is Ariana Hanshaw, and I’m an English, Writing, and Publication, major with a Cyber Security minor here at the Dahlonega campus. I’m in my fourth – and hopefully final – year here at UNG, and I’m stoked to be spending it here at the University Press!
I was born and raised on the Pacific coastline. In fact, most of my life has been spent in the surf at Carpinteria State Beach, just a ten-minute drive away from my childhood home. My fondest memories are of this place are tar stuck to my feet, sand caked everywhere, sea spray tangles in my hair–but I never actually learned how to swim there. Shocking, considering my younger brother grew up there too and swims like some kind of half-fish man. My love of writing began on my childhood beach. I would write stories from the point of view of the sandpipers, poetry about the depth of the ocean, and all means of novel ideas to act on when I got older.
But on the cusp of adulthood, my mother and father rented an RV and drove us across the southern United States to settle finally here in Georgia. Imagine that; kids and animals alike sharing this cramped space for three-thousand miles and five full days like some twisted, land-based version of Noah’s Ark. I’ve always longed to make a return trip, but next time it’ll be by plane!
After moving to Georgia, the prospect of writing for a living waned, my parents’ support for writing vanished, and cynicism surrounding the English field put me off. By high school, I had abandoned the idea completely. I would even refuse to write essays, but my teachers would still try to push me to enter the field, although I didn’t. Not right away.
I enrolled in college as an International Affairs major with a Korean minor. The idea was to teach English in South Korea and be subsidized by the government for doing so. But the political science classes made me cynical, so I took a course in grammar to spite everyone who told me I shouldn’t be an English major. My love for writing had never diminished, and so I continued taking English courses, and before I knew it, I was on my way to earning a degree in Writing and Publication. I officially became an English major at the end of my junior year, and I haven’t looked back!
Now that I’ve realized that English is more than just writing, I know that there is a career path for me, and I feel that it’s in publishing. That’s why I’m so excited to be doing some real, hands-on work with the University Press. I feel like this is the opportunity I didn’t know I had been waiting for, and you’d better believe I’m going to make the most of it.