College Life

by

How to Start a College Magazine, Part Four: Survival and Growth

 

Want help starting a magazine?

I’m always happy to answer questions! Post them in the comment section or contact me directly.

 

This is the last article in a four-part series on starting a college magazine, written by the former Chairman of the Yale Record, America’s oldest humor magazine. There’s a lot of information here; pick and choose whatever seems helpful. 

 

In the first three parts of this series, I gave advice about starting a publication, recruiting writers and other staff, and putting together your first few issues.

This is the cleanup post, where I talk about everything else. It will make more sense if you read the other posts first. Topics covered include:

  • Publicizing your work
  • Funding the publication
  • Selling advertisements
  • Staying out of trouble
  • Preserving your history

 

Find Readers, Get Famous

You’ve published an issue! Congratulations.

Now what?

Continue reading →

by

How To Write a Job Posting: One Student’s Opinion (Part II)

Introduction

Hello! I’m Aaron Gertler, and I’ve spent the last six months looking at hundreds of job postings on Yale University’s career site. Some of them were awesome; many were awful.

In the first part of this post, I examined common mistakes companies make when trying to hire students. This post is much happier: I’ll be looking at the common traits of my favorite job postings, and explaining how companies can use them to improve their hiring process!

Continue reading →

by

How to Write a Job Posting: One Student’s Opinion

Dear companies,

Are you trying to hire students fresh out of college?

If so, that’s wonderful! We really appreciate it. I’ve applied to a lot of jobs over the past few months, and most companies I spoke to made me feel welcome and appreciated.

However, there are a few strange flaws I see in a lot of job postings. These aren’t just my pet peeves: I’ve also heard a complaints from many other students. And when a student has hundreds of jobs they could be applying for, a good job posting often makes the difference between keeping them on the hook and losing them in the wide sea of capitalism.

To help companies improve their hiring, I’ve written this quick guide to writing job postings for students. Some of this might be relevant to other job postings. Take what you like, leave what you don’t.

Continue reading →

by

Increasingly Alarming

Yale’s Environmental Health and Safety office recently sent an email to all students with the headline “The Dangers Are Real”.

While the email included useful information on important topics like “the history of pedestrian right-of-way in Connecticut”, this was my favorite part:

“Distracted pedestrians are being injured at an increasingly alarming rate.”

“Increasingly alarming” is a beautiful phrase.

The Yale Environmental Health and Safety office does not imply that the rate of injury among distracted pedestrians is increasing — only that the employees of the office are becoming progressively more alarmed.

There are many reasons this could be happening. Maybe the injury rate really is increasing. Or maybe the injury rate is decreasing, but the average injury has gotten worse.

It is also possible that the author of this email is suffering from unrelated feelings of alarm, but attributes this alarm to the current rate of distracted pedestrian injury in Connecticut, whatever that rate may be.

* * * * *

The phrase “increasingly alarming” can be applied to literally any set of time-series data while remaining subjectively accurate.

For example:

  • “The global temperature is rising at an increasingly alarming rate.”
  • “Bears are attacking Canadians at an increasingly alarming rate.”
  • “George Clooney is aging at an increasingly alarming rate.”

And so on.

I feel like this phrase ought to have an Urban Dictionary entry, or at least a national holiday in the United States. On “Increasingly Alarming Day”, citizens would go about their business as usual, but would feel slightly more anxious than on other days.

Already, the idea has support from doctors, environmentalists, and Piers Morgan. I sense the seeds of a grassroots movement.

Our slogan?

“Increasingly Alarming”: Your one-stop solution for statistically dubious panic.

by

How to Start a College Magazine, Part Three: Building the Publication

 

Want help starting a magazine?

I’m always happy to answer questions! Post them in the comment section or contact me directly.

 

This is the third article in a four-part series on starting a college magazine, written by the Chairman of the Yale Record, America’s oldest humor magazine. There’s a lot of information here; pick and choose whatever seems helpful. 

Click here to start with the first article.

 

Hello again, and welcome to the third part of the Guide!

This article tells you how to go from:

“Okay, we have people interested, now what?”

To:

“Omigod look at our first issue hot off the presses/internet, it’s BEAUTIFUL!

I’ve written this in three parts: The “how to write an issue” checklist, a sample timeline for a monthly magazine, and an extremely long and non-mandatory special feature: “One year in the publishing life of the Yale Record“.

In the final section, I explain what we do during the year, and when. Whether you’re starting a magazine in the summertime or the middle of the school year, you should be able to pick up a similar rhythm.

Continue reading →

by

How to Start a College Magazine, Part Two: Recruitment and Staffing

 

Want help starting a magazine?

I’m always happy to answer questions! Post them in the comment section or contact me directly.

 

Welcome to the second article in a four-part series on starting a college magazine. There’s a lot of information here; pick and choose whatever seems helpful. Click here to read the first article.

 

Hello again! This time, I’m going to talk about finding people to work with you on your new publication.

If you think you already have enough people to get going, you can skip this article and read the next one. But I’d recommend recruiting even if you have friends working with you. Staffing can be unpredictable: people graduate, people leave school, and people move on. Having extra writers and editors rarely hurts, as long as you can keep your standards high.

 

How to Recruit Writers

And, of course, all the people who aren’t writers. Every publication’s needs will be different. However, I’ll explain the setup of the Yale Record, since we have a large staff, work in many different styles, and publish a lot of art.

Continue reading →

by

How to Start a College Magazine, Part One: Ground Rules and Structure

 

Want help starting a magazine?

I might be able to answer some questions or provide specific guidance. Feel free to contact me directly.

 

This is the first article in a four-part series on starting a college magazine, written by the Chairman of the Yale Record, America’s oldest humor magazine. There’s a lot of information here; pick and choose whatever seems helpful. 

 

As the chairman of the Yale Record, and the person whose email is connected to this web page, I get requests from students around the world to advise them on college magazine projects.

I looked around the internet to find resources on this, but most of them were written at least a decade ago, or applied only to newspapers, rather than the humor magazines/fashion blogs/scholarly journals people were asking me about. So I decided to write a series of posts explaining most of what I know about college publications.

This is part one of the guide, which deals with “ground rules”: things you should do, or think about, before you start writing and recruiting.

For part two, which deals with building a staff, click here. For part three, which deals with creating content, click here. For part four, which discusses growing your publication after you start producing material, click here.

Continue reading →