Westminster, Kosovo, NYC: Chelsea Tuthill, ’12

Graduating from Westminster in 2012 with a degree in English Literature has led me down a wonderful and interesting path. The wide variety of journalism and literature classes I took not only helped me grow as a person, but it has given me endless career opportunities.  A few months after graduation I began teaching English as a Second Language in Prishtina, Kosovo. After completing the academic year abroad, I returned to America to pursue a career opportunity in the world of writing and publishing. I have recently begun working at American Media, Inc. in Manhattan.

Though it is a recent start for me in New York, I have already been able to work on projects for both Men’s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness magazines. My first piece can be found on mensfitness.com, a brief “how-to” for men who want to get their wives or girlfriends involved in watching sports with them. I am currently working on a project exploring the world of bodybuilding and where it first began.

Westminster and living in Fulton prepared me for many things, but one thing it never could have prepared me for was trying to figure out the New York City Subway system.

Picture this: It is dark, cold, and dreary. I’m speed walking to catch my usual train uptown … It leaves in a few minutes, and that person in front of me on the stairs just won’t move any faster! Swipe, and through the turnstile I go.

I breeze past an MTA employee and hear him mumble something. I look ahead and see a swarm of people coming from the train I need to get on.

“I’m sorry?” I reply.

“The 1 isn’t running. You have to take a different one.”

Wonderful. I only know of one other stop in the near vicinity and it will involve riding the train past my stop and on the opposite side of the city of where I need to get on yet another crowded train to go home.

All in all, the view of the Statue of Liberty at sunset just one block from my office surely makes up for the bad commute here and there!

Working and living in New York has been a dream of mine since high school, and my Westminster degree gave me the knowledge and confidence to get here.