Silver Currents of Change

Chapter 17

Zarah felt fully alive; more alive than she ever believed was possible, and it was hard to sit through class on Monday of the last week of the fall semester. She was inspired and excited after learning her magazine, Araminta, had been selected by every one of her fellow classmates as the proposal they thought was worthy of actual production. Competition judging was blind, so no one knew which student proposed or voted for which publication. And since no one knew "Araminta" was her middle name, just as the assignment required, she had given her publication a unique, conceptually relevant and personal signature while hiding in plain sight.

As creator of the winning proposal, in next semester's course she would be editor-in-chief of the publication. She would be the boss, in charge of leading production, and the other students would work for her and with her to research and prepare content for her magazine, including feature-length articles. It was an amazing feeling, and it was still hard for her to believe what was happening. Araminta had won the competition. 

It was a "living history" publication created to further the work she started with the JCU Black History Club she founded on campus, and it would be a portal for connecting the past with the present. It would be a way to teach African American history while examining connections between history and current events and issues, and while honoring lessons learned, or not, from the past. Her story on the man behind the drawing of the first site of JCU, the one Professor Wilson asked her to write, was finished and she had packaged it with her proposal as an example of the type of research, style of writing, and one of the types of stories the publication would offer its readers.

Professor Wilson was not a judge or a voter, so although he knew she had written the article, no one else knew. After the students voted and selected the five best proposals, a committee made up of other instructors and professors looked at each of them, then came to class to announce which one they chose as the winning publication. To Zarah, it seemed unreal and still felt like a dream as she accepted congratulations from her classmates, her professor, and the faculty committee that supervised final judging. Already completing an internship at Wilson Publishing, it wasn't until judging was over and the winning proposal announcement was made that she started believing, in earnest, her career dreams were actually going to come true.

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Between her school activities, her job at Val-Mart, and her internship, Zarah was working so much after winning the competition, the months seemed to fly by. In early March of 2007, Professor Wilson asked her to come see him in his office at Wilson Publishing. By that time, she'd been working there four months and thought everything was going well. As far as she knew, she was smashing her responsibilities, going above and beyond the call of duty—like she always did on any job she accepted, or any assignment she was ever given. Tempted to chew at her nails, she started praying nothing was wrong.

In the months since she'd been at WPI, she had set up the internship program, starting with organizing and equipping the physical space where the interns would work. It was an area of cubicles near her office, and it housed three people and everything they needed to do their jobs well. After that, she prepared job descriptions, work assignments, and recruitment announcements, then posted the announcements online and in print. Next, she interviewed applicants, the same way she'd done when she was executive editor of the C&B, and after that, she made hiring recommendations, all of which Professor Wilson and Laura approved with no hesitation. She recommended three final candidates out of twenty-five applicants, and Laura made the final decision. They hired two whites and one black student. The black student was someone she already knew well, and loved very much, as a friend. After he was hired, Marcus told her he was overjoyed to get to work with her at WPI. The two white students she recommended were from a nearby university, and both had impressive portfolios and backgrounds in journalism. Harvey and Laura had final say, and in the final analysis, they felt her picks were great. Since she was also an intern, the internship program had four participants, two blacks and two whites.