Jacquelyn Green
Professional Writing Fall 2015
To fully explain the impact of Professional Writing on my life, I would break down my class experience into two parts: volunteer time and professional skills development. Personally, I grew as a result of my interactions with individual refugees and immigrants through service at the Haywood Halloween party and multiple sessions of citizenship classes. Professionally, I gained valuable experience working with design and coding tools that can be carried over into any future career.
This semester, I began to understand the personal nature of the growing global refugee state of emergency. Having a very limited prior knowledge, I was shocked to witness so many newsreels, viral videos, and political conversations centering on the immigrant experience. What does it mean to be a young man, a mother, a child, a professional - a person - escaping a war-torn homeland? I had no idea. This semester, my picture of that experience expanded immensely.
One of the most impactful moments of the semester came at my first evening volunteering for NICE’s citizenship class. My student, a young woman from Iraq, knew our government systems and national history better than I did and was excited to celebrate Thanksgiving as an American once she passed her citizenship test. When we finished quizzing her over the Constitution and helping her spell “California,” we all joined another group in the large room, where Donna (who oversees these classes) was walking two Iraqi women through the citizenship interview process. When Donna asked them if they had been out of the country since their immigration, one of the women nodded and held up a photo of her brother on her phone. She explained in broken English that he had been killed by terrorists and broke down crying in front of all of us.
I feel that this heartbreaking moment really captures a small fragmented image of the refugee experience. Many of these people don’t want to be here; they’d much rather be home with their families, safe and in a comfortable, familiar environment. But their homes are destroyed, and their families must flee.
So what can we do? That’s what I wanted to piece together through this class. And I think I’ve decided upon my answer: we have to tell their stories. I attempted to do that through our projects this semester. Through our marketing materials, I sought to create a clear narrative of NICE’s involvement to engage potential partners with the Info Sheet and directly capture the refugee experience in the Client Stories segment. Through composing a grant, I attempted to persuade the Gannett Foundation to become a part of these stories by promoting the success of young immigrants’ education and cultural integration. I used tools such as InDesign, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver to craft a compelling visualization of what it means to be an immigrant in Nashville in 2015 in the hope that others will feel led to do their part as well.
Jacquelyn Green • Professional Writing Fall 2015