My (Actual Last) First Day of School

Today was a packed, but amazing day at the Columbia Publishing Course! I started the day off by going to the gym with one of my housemates (I'm really trying to become a morning gym person...we'll see how long it lasts) before heading to my first lecture at 10 a.m. My typical day will consist of three, two-hour lectures at 10 am, 2pm, and 7 pm. These lectures will be given by industry professionals in all different areas of publishing.

So far the lectures have been about developing and promoting nonfiction book ideas and resume/cover letter etiquette. Before coming to the course we all had several advance assignments that we received feedback on. This week we will be working in small groups to perfect our resumes and cover letters even further with a professional mentor! The lecturers today were a Senior Editor, CEO and General Manager of well established publishing houses in the city and they all had such unique insight and advice to share!

Our keynote speaker gave us a really great overview of the publishing industry as a whole, the future of the business, the potential for growth in regard to employment and so on. It made me realize very quickly that this business is competitive and challenging. However, as our keynote speaker said today, it is important to learn everything about every aspect of the business at the beginning of our careers (now) and I plan on doing just that over the next month and a half.
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Despite the busy schedule today, I had some time to explore between classes. Of course, my first stop was to a small, independent bookstore across the street from Pulitzer Hall, the place where all of my lectures are held. In this store, I stumbled upon a really cool project called "Read me if you liked..." Basically, an unknown book was wrapped in brown paper with a list of three books taped on it. The books on this list were similar, and the "mystery book" inside was selected to appeal to the readers of those books.

That may have been a super confusing explanation (which I anticipated) so I took some pictures that will probably explain everything better!

(This is the mystery book that was inside the brown paper!) 

I am absolutely obsessed with this project and cannot believe I've never seen it anywhere before! This is such a good idea for people like me who are always looking for a good book recommendation, or are so overwhelmed by titles that they can't choose just one! After reading the first few pages of this book I can already tell I'll love it. Even though I have a lot of work to do related to the course I will make sure to read for fun while I'm here!

I should also mention that the food here is AMAZING. 

Thank you all for reading my last blog post and hopefully this one too!