Hello, I am Dakota, and I am a senior who is graduating in the spring and also pursuing the editing and publishing certificate. This is my second year here at SDSU since I transferred from Grossmont College. I hope to join the MFA program after I graduate. 

I grew up here in San Diego and have no plans of moving since I love this city. When I am not in class, I am working at an elementary school as a student helper, trying my best to convince fourth and fifth-graders to read more books. While I don’t want to become a teacher, I surprisingly love this job and the kids that I work with. I am always having the best conversations with ten-year-olds. They are the weirdest and funniest people that I know. In the future, I hope to be an editor working with a publishing house and help authors achieve their hopes and dreams. 

I have always been passionate about books since I was a child. I grew up reading Harry Potter with my parents and having long discussions about it during breakfast on the weekends. Even now, my parents will still listen to me rant about books. Books were what got me through my elementary and middle school years as a form of escapism. I was able to slip through the cracks and sink into whatever fantasy world I found comforting. Now the tables have turned, and I am the one who is creating worlds at my fingertips. I am currently writing the first book in a fantasy trilogy. It has been a passion project of mine for the past few years, which I hope to publish soon. 

To me, books are extremely precious and something to be cherished, which is why I am taking this class. I loved the idea of learning about the history of the book as a physical being and as an art medium. I think that it is easy to forget that books are an art form. It’s easy to boil them down to words on a page, so I have never really taken much thought into what makes a book a book. I hope that this class helps me reimagine books in a new way that reignites the love that I have for them. 

I look forward to working with you all in this class!