I’ve been writing since I was in grade school. I was published by third grade, in a national poetry book for students. When it came time for the capstone in my final year at SLA, I knew I wanted to write something. I took the idea of writing a book and kind of ran with it. It would be titled Eat. I asked for submissions in the advisory memo, and on social media, and ended up with a few written works from people I knew online. The submissions were placed in a section of the book titled Moving Forward, dedicated to personal struggles and issues people have faced. This particular section is a combination of music, famous poems, personal works, and submissions. There were two other sections to the book, In Time and A Continuous; In Time being dedicated to time stamped things I’d written late at night or randomly throughout days, while A Continuous is simply things I’m proud of, and occasionally things I’ve had published.

Most of the time I spent working on this project, I was working with other people to collect works and compile things in an order that made sense. Getting people to submit things took a while, which is mostly due to asking for newly written works from most people. In this process, I came to understand that while I write well, writing on command like book writing entails is incredibly difficult. It’s also really really hard to get people to cooperate and contribute to things when you lack any serious backing to prove something will come from their effort.

In the end, though, the final piece came together nicely. It’s a polished 30 page book, including the title page.

When I was deciding what I was going to do for my Capstone project, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could incorporate what I have learned in my time at SLA, and my passions outside of school as well. Music has always been an important part of my life, and I had also learned a lot about digital media in my classes, so I decided that I was going to create an EP with a few of my friends in and out of SLA. Working together we were able to put together five original songs, put on a release show with a handful of other successful bands in Philadelphia, make a music video for the lead single from the set of songs, and learn how to promote ourselves along the way.

We began recording in the early summer, and finished in early winter, spending approximately spending five months to complete a project that ultimately began a year before. Along the way I was able to learn a lot more about the intricacies of a band and how different sounds meld together to make a cohesive sound, that was not only complex, but sounded good too. I learned a lot about marketing and promoting as well, with the goal of getting as many people to listen to our music as we could, we were able to make connections not only in Philly, but around the world. I am very proud of all the time and effort put into this project, and hope that I can see it grow even larger.