From English Department Communications Intern Marina Miller.

What’s your name? Your major?

Dan Rice. Communications Study major, English & Business minors.

How did you spend most of your time in Eddy Hall?

Doing homework, writing stories and writing for the Collegian, and of course, eating food. Those were my main goals there.

What’s it like working for the Collegian, do you like it?

I write for the opinion column, and I have a lot of strong views on things. I like to experience writing and getting paid to write. It forces you to write more, it’s helpful because otherwise it’s hard to get yourself to write. Most recently I wrote an article about mental disorders for The Collegian and one of the senior staff members said he wanted me to enter it into a contest.

What are you working on today?

This is my last semester and with my business minor, I want to start a publishing company and write my own novels. The genre will likely be mostly fantasy and fiction and literature. I did write a children’s book called “Four and the same.” It’s about four fish who are all different in terms of color, gender, etc. and how they initially think they’re different but later recognize that they have more commonalities than they do differences.

Favorite moment in Eddy Hall?

I really enjoyed watching “Citizen Cane” for a History of Film class which was in the big lecture hall in Eddy.

Favorite English class or teacher?

Zach Hutchins when he taught American Literature in Cultural Contexts: Love Letters.

Describe Eddy Hall in one word.

Destroyed… *chuckles* Well, renovated works I guess.

What’s your favorite book, poem, quote, lyric, genre? Who is your favorite author?

I’m still partial to JK Rowling; I’ve loved Harry Potter since I was 8 years old but I love the quote from Dumbledore: “It’s not what you are born, but what you grow to be.”

If you were to give advice to incoming CSU English majors, what would it be?

I’d say, “Be prepared to read a lot, but also have an open mind” because in most of my English classes there’s been some very eye-opening things that teachers have taught about life, not just about literature. So I think having an open mind about what you’re learning you’ll get a lot more about life more than just rhetoric, ethos, pathos, logos. College in general is more about how to live life rather than just do homework.

I think it’s been very interesting doing a business minor with a liberal arts major/minor. Don’t be afraid to follow multiple interests. Just follow your passions even if you don’t know how they’ll connect right now. Steve Jobs once said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Do what you want to do, and what you’re passionate about is what will probably be the best direction for you. I know when I was a freshmen I didn’t know what the hell I was I doing. I thought “I guess I’ll do something with books because I like to read.” *chuckles* I think that’s the best guidance I can give other than just don’t fool around.

What’s your biggest goal, priority right now?

To start my publishing company, write my novel, and is it too ambitious to say change the publishing industry? With my business I want to have an app that’s dedicated to my own work that would let you convert text to audio formats of a book whenever. So when you’re on the go, you can read and then keep listening as you go. Making books more mobile, not overpricing audio books and giving authors more for their work, and more creative control is what really means a lot to me. The concept of a book in digital format, there’s so much more you can do than just have blocks of text that don’t have much more of an advantage than physical text. Again, ambitious.

What are your thoughts on Twitter?

I post links to my article on Twitter because The Collegian likes me too. I don’t understand the benefit of the concept that everything has to be short, a set number of characters. To a degree, there’s poetry like Haikus that limit your syllables which I can appreciate, but I think Twitter limits communication. If you only have 140 characters to communicate, you may not be able to fully express your thoughts and I don’t see the advantage of that. I don’t passionately hate it, but I don’t really care for it.