Henry Egan ’22: Throughout the past few weeks, I have had the privilege to work with the Doctors Sarah and Jeff Drury on their edited book Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: An American Musical. This experience has been rewarding in many ways.

First, I was able to familiarize myself with Hamilton and its intricacies. I was not very familiar with the musical before this internship, so it was a joy to take a deeper dive into the musical itself but also the many creative processes that worked together to create this phenomenon. As an English major, I greatly enjoy analyzing and taking apart a text so being able to read people’s critiques on the show was very interesting. I was excited to gain a new appreciation for the musical as well as for musicals as an art form in general.

My duties have been to assist the Doctors Drury in the various stages of preparing a book for publication. This included copy editing, proofreading, indexing, and organizing other materials for publication. Most of this process was completely foreign to me before the start of this internship. I have had to learn about and teach myself the steps of the publication process. I had to perform copy editing and proofreading referring to the rules of the Chicago Manual of Style as well as the style choices outlined by the publisher. This was a big change from my experience editing my academic papers. Indexing was an entirely new skill for me. It was fascinating to learn about the nuances of creating an effective index and then apply mine knew knowledge to compile one for this book.

The fact that I (like most people) have been doing this internship remotely has been a challenge. I have had to hone my communication abilities so that I can do the best work possible.

Overall this has been an extremely rewarding experience. It was intriguing to learn new skills that I can apply to my future schoolwork at Wabash. This experience has also opened my eyes to a new potential career path in copy editing that I did not consider before. I greatly appreciate Roland Morin and the
Doctors Drury for this opportunity to expand my horizons this summer.