Hazal Kazancı
AMER 2024
Writer for Arcadia

Hazal Kazancı (AMER 2024) shares her experiences writing for Arcadia, a non-profit organization whose main goal is to produce high-quality articles in a range of subjects, including literature and science, as well as to offer appealing content on social media platforms, all while spreading the free educational value of scholarly articles to everyone on a global scale.

I have been working as a writer at Arcadia for one month, as of 30 April. I write weekly articles to be published on the website about American culture, literature and history. Writers are allowed to choose topics that are specific to their area of expertise, only which means their university major. There are two different types of articles written by writers in Arcadia. Every writer is expected to write two “stand-alone” articles and two “101 article series” articles in a month. 101 article series, containing 6-8 articles, is a course from university studies of writers which allows them to be the professors of the course they studied while stand-alone articles refer to separate articles that require no continuity.

Since I am a senior, I am used to scrolling through LinkedIn for employment purposes because I wanted to do something professional before graduation. This was the time I found Arcadia’s job advertisement. I applied for a writer position with my resume. After they contacted me, they wanted me to send a sample article of mine written according to Arcadia’s standards. Meeting the standards, I was informed that I was eligible to have a Zoom meeting with the Arcadia HR team. Soon after, I was a part of Arcadia and began to write articles.

Being a writer has become something that I am interested in doing as a career after I’ve spent some time in AMER. In our department, we are provided with numerous sources that are foundational to American culture and literature. In this way, we students not only have the opportunity to dive deeper into American ideologies, but also, we obtain the ability of critical thinking and analysis. Throughout the semester, in AMER, students are expected to engage in critical thinking and extensive research to demonstrate what we’ve learnt from our much-valued professors through various writing assignments that require students to have a critical stance and a concrete argument supported by several academic sources. Our assignments helped me to gain proficiency in writing. With my passion for American culture and literature combined with the writing skills I acquired in AMER, I decided that writing was a good career plan for me.

As a senior, I definitely want to continue this work despite the possibility of going to graduate school. Hopefully, writing will be a part of my life forever!

If you would like to read the articles Hazal has contributed to Arcadia, you can find them here:

Science Fiction as a Tool for Social Commentary
Race Component in August Wilson’s Fences
American Intellectual History 101: A Native American Reflects on White Culture
American Intellectual History 101: Effect of Enlightenment Thinkers

Congratulations Hazal! We wish you continued success!