I am making you all come along with my as I apply for teacher's college
Sept. 18th, I filled out my initial application for Teacher's College. I applied for 5 programs. I/S (grades 7-12) in History and French at my current university, J/I (grades 4-10) in History at my current uni, J/I in French at my current uni, I/S at Queen's Univeristy, and I/S at Trent University. This cost me $575.
I started filling out my application portfolio immediately, and am still in the middle of that. I got one of my History profs and one of my French profs to be references for me.
Today, I wrote my French Proficiency exam (which cost an extra $140 for a school I already attend... and already had to do a test like this to establish French as my minor... and I'm getting all As in my French classes... whatever.) I need at least a 72 on the written portion (what I did today) to get invited to the oral portion, and I need to pass that to be eligible to get accepted into the programs. If I am, I will have to take french class in Teacher's College (which I am totally fine doing.) HOWEVER, if I get at least an 88 on the written portion and pass the oral portion, I don't need to take that class. Which would be cool.
Still need to finish my portfolio/statement of experience for all 3 schools (should be able to use the same one for all 3 with some minor adjustments) and check if there's anything else I need to do. Completed applications are due December 1st. I think the end is in sight!
30.10.2022. Anxious mess today. Woke up at the crack of dawn, skipped breakfast, and dragged my ass to work. It's one of those days when I don’t want people to look at me and the idea of going anywhere to get lunch makes me feel out of breath, my legs turn to jelly. My friend stayed with me on the phone so I could actually walk out without having a panic attack halfway through. But hey, it’s gotten a lot better than it's been for the past 3 years so there’s your silver lining.
Editing out my schedule for next month today and trying to not think about scholarship deadlines. I also need to get some readings done and fix my bibliography by the end of the month. My works cited page is all over the place. The rest I don't want to think about. Cross that bridge when I get there.
Is it sad that I'm so stressed I'm trying to create my own onsen from Ghost of Tsushima; by using my bathtub, a couple of bath bombs, and the sound track from the game? I even went as far as cranking the heat up untill I could see steam. Gods save me, I think I have a problem....
Erica Santoni, MBA 2019 and co-president of the Women’s Student Association (WSA), had doubts about applying to Harvard Business School. Learn how the application process was the first of many transformations in her life, and more about her experience in pursuing diversity in the classroom and the workforce.
I think I talked a lot about planning out your whole zine that we finally can go on with the next step:
Phase 2: Applications
A zine wouldn’t be a zine (okay, yes it would because there are plenty of zines where only one artist contributes to it but that’s not why you’re here) if it wasn’t for the contributors of a zine. The application process is probably the busiest part of making a zine, and it’s right at the start so you basically are shoved into the cold water immediately without much of a pep talk.
Ideally, if you start open applications, you
have gathered some mods so you don’t need to go through this whole ordeal alone
created a web presence (tumblr, twitter, etc.) to spread the word and have people easily gather all info they need to apply (plus some kind of corporate design that makes everything look like a unit)
thought about what is a reasonable number of contributors for you to handle and what type of contributions you want to allow (writing, illustrations, comics, cosplay shoots, ...)
thought about your zine format (printed/digital, size, wordcounts, etc.)
have a budget + printing services (if you have anything printed)
have a solid, manageable schedule figured out (note it probably will change a little bit along the way but ideally really not much or not at all)
Some pointers of how you can figure these parts out are on previous parts of this series, so maybe read up on those if you have any questions. Others will come now as they are something that you kind of figure out at this stage or are simply a budget/taste or goal-oriented thing.
During this phase, you need to basically cover the following steps:
launch all your social media/web presence if you haven’t yet
write down exactly what your zine is about, what format you’ll use and any other specs
have a FAQ
create application forms or regulations on how to apply
gather contributors
weed out those applicants you don’t want on your zine
constantly answering questions people send you (even though you probably stated so in the FAQ)
confirm participation, backups, and declined applicants
The number of contributors
I think the number of contributors is something you kind of have an idea of in the beginning but it will flesh out more as soon as other things get settled and can highly depend on what kind of works contributors create.
Probably the most time-intense thing for mods to handle are fic-writers, which is why there are (sadly) so few zines that allow many or even any writers at all. Writers usually get the most pages per person, need a beta-reader, need their fics to be formatted properly in the zine file to make them look like a unit, and, if you allow collaborations with artists, may have illustrations that also need to be included to the fic.
Artists are much more autonome as they just deliver their final file and you just insert it. While it sounds great at first because you as a mod seem to not have that much of a workload to do, I must also mention the fact that I found it harder to work with artists than with writers according to their reliability.
Zine culture somehow established that there are more zines featuring more artists than writers, thus writers per say don’t have many zines they can work on, leading to a cleaner schedule than especially popular and high-quality artists tend to have. Depending on how professionally artists organise themselves, I had to run after quite a few artists for every deadline despite sending reminders via e-mail and our discord channel. The time and effort you save in the planned production you will most likely need to invest at a later point, so it’s not exactly that much of a difference as long as you have mods who work in the respective media themselves.
Generally speaking, having 1 mod per 10-15 contributors is probably a good rule of thumb, but yet again, there are exceptions, and if you split the general fields of modding between your mods, you probably could take on more contributors as you probably don’t need to care about your social media accounts in addition, and everyone works with contributors they can actually relate to due to the shared expertise.
Also, don’t forget that you also need to budget your whole zine, and if you happen to make a printed zine, this also means you should compensate the contributors with a free copy. Think about how many contributors you can afford if you don’t make any sales and how likely it is to get a good (printed) zine out of that number.
Having an affordable number also means that you need to think about how many pages your zine should have. Usually, the binding is more of a cost factor than the number of pages, though it also definitely makes a difference if you have 40 or 60 pages (or 100). Be aware of that, too.
With certain themes also comes a specific number of contributors. I think my best example is the HQ Manager Zine I worked on as a contributor. Its theme was ‘Four Seasons,’ featuring the nine confirmed Haikyuu!! Managers, with the specific rule that per manager, in all four seasons was at least one art and one written piece included. Thus we were 36 contributors with a minimum of 9 writers and 9 artists (we ended up with 27 artists I believe.)
With those zines, it is crucial to have a highly functional backup system because there always are a few who just drop out.
What kind of contributors do you want to have?
This pretty much goes along with what I mentioned above but also ... not.
There are zines that are about specific topics and where especially certain groups of creators are encouraged to contribute to give them a voice. Usually it’s about women/girls, trans and nonbinary people, LGBTAQ+ people, PoC, disabled, ... or any combination of the above and how those groups experience the fandom, characters, or topics featured in the zine.
If you want to create a zine where you especially represent a certain group, make sure to explicitly say so in your Call for Submission posts, and also define it (for example want your contributors to be girls and women, specify if you also allow feminine-presenting nonbinary people as they usually have a similar experience as women if that’s what you’re aiming for), so that possible applicants know if they should even bother to check out your application form.
If you want to cover adult/NSFW themes in your zine, make sure you have an 18+ policy simply to not accidentally become a criminal.
If you have any more specifics because they are crucial to your content, incorporate them as early as possible so you don’t get somebody’s hopes up for nothing. It also helps you as a mod to check certain criteria when you look through your applicants. (And no, I don’t mean ‘must be actually good at art’ or something like that.)
Applications or Invite Only?
Above criteria don’t only apply to open-for-application zines, as Invite Only or a mixture of both need to handle their contributor numbers as well. However, the process of gathering contributors is different.
Invite Only zines have several pros:
you don’t need to justify why X got hired and not Y
you can assure a certain level of quality simply because you know what the contributors are capable of
you can better predict what kind of feel the zine will have
as they usually feature popular contributors, they are likely to sell quite well
you don’t need to dig through tons and tons of applications and can save some time
less time pressure as there are not over hundred people waiting to *finally* get their e-mail
However, there of course are some cons as well:
getting popular /contributors you admire interested in your zine might be difficult if you yourself aren’t very well-known/don’t know the contributors personally
your invited contributors might just say no, leaving you with fewer contributors than intended
the zine might come off as elitist
it’s more difficult to get people invested into your zine from the start as the first public phase (applications) is also hidden away behind closed doors and basically just pop out of the closet several months later with a finished zine up for preorders
I personally don’t really have much experience with Invite Only zines, but generally it feels more like a group project than “one is the manager and everyone else are just the employees” as it tends to be more with open-for-application zines. This can be both, positive and negative, this is something you need to figure out for yourself.
Pros of Public Application:
you don’t really need to worry about not getting enough contributors
you might discover many gems you didn’t know about at first at all because they navigate on different parts of the fandom
you have a big variety of applicants to choose from and find a tone of your zine later on if you’re unsure about it at first
no-one really feels left out because they could just apply
people can get pumped up about your zine early on and possibly save up for it
Cons entail:
there is usually quantity over quality and it takes some time to get to the Good Stuff™
it is a time-consuming process with usually a lot of time pressure because everyone just wants to know who’s in and who’s not
people might get dissappointed because they didn’t get in ‘despite being so much better than XY’
especially artists tend to juggle several zines at once and might not have the time and headspace for your project that you wish they had
you don’t quite know if it will attract more popular contributors
Public Appliations are currently the most common form of gathering contributors methinks, but as I mentioned, both have their pros and cons, and it’s something you need to figure out yourself and what fits your zine best. PA zines have a more democratic feel when it comes to who’s on it as basically everyone could have a chance, though that probably isn’t the case when you move away from the application phase. PA zines tend to be more rigit in their original purpose compared to IO zines.
What also is a thing that zines do is a combination of both. That way, you can target specific contributors that probably would get in a larger crowd, and get public applications too. The more popular contributors also might encourage their fans to apply simply by being named as an already set contributor because, really, who wouldn’t love to work on the same project as their idol (and maybe get senpai notice them)? The better and more popular the already set contributors are, the more quality contributors they might draw in. Stressing ‘might’ here because you can’t always be 100% sure.
How do you want to host applications?
Currently, most zines I have seen use Google Surveys to create application forms as it is pretty easy and intuitive to work with and lets you export all your answers into spreadsheets (plus it’s a cloud device so all of your mods can have access to it.) I personally can only recommend it. I don’t know if there are similar online services as I know that not everyone likes using Google, so if you have any which are similar, please let me know!
Another option is letting people apply via e-mail, though I would advise you to only do that if you know you’ll have very limited applicant numbers or have to deal with just the Invite Only traffic, otherwise it’s probably going to get messy as however small an nieche the fandom is, there will always be plenty to apply to, simply because they hope to finally be on a zine.
I also would suggest to have seperate forms for the different positions you offer (e.g. zine artist, bonus artist, writer, ...), that way you can already split up who’s covering which applications and you’ll be done faster.
I think the next few installments will deal with how to build up a functional application form, what to cover in your FAQ and the important specs on your Call for Submission, but that’s it for now!
Thank you for reading, I hope this is somewhat helpful.
since i got into my dream college (MIT) and am graduating hs soon, I made a college advice wordpress blog notyourdestiny for all you high schoolers out there c: hope it helps a little bit?
feel free to shoot me any questions on here or on the wordpress contact page!
