Spring/Summer 2005

We are all pilgrims on the wearisome roads of our lives. There is always something ahead of us that we have not yet overtaken. When we do catch up with something, it immediately becomes an injunction to leave it behind us and go onwards. Every end becomes a beginning -- Karl Rahner, S.J. (Meditations and Prayers)

About us

I remember the very first LooseLeaf launch in the fall of 2003, when seven strong-minded, talented, and energetic women celebrated their creation. An online magazine concept borne from a classroom idea had come to fruition. These aspiring Print Futures writers had done what no other class before them had attempted to do—they created a venue for students to showcase their work.

Well, lucky for us, because we’re now celebrating the spring 2005 issue entitled Growing. And I won’t say that it wasn’t a challenge to get it out there. With new careers and job searches on our minds, we have all found ourselves with little time to reflect on such issues as Angst, Journeys, Reflection, Transformations and Communications.

But I think I speak for us all when I say that it’s been a fantastic experience to work with such a supportive collective of writers. Through utilizing each others’ strengths and abilities and overlooking the odd weaknesses, we’ve managed to pull it off. And of course we’ve all grown in the process.

If I may digress for a moment on the theme, today I pulled out my original admissions samples for entrance into the program. My thought was that I might be able to salvage a restaurant review and use it as a portfolio sample. I winced at how absolutely bad the writing was. Oh, sure, I could’ve added a few line breaks to the three quarters of a page single-spaced paragraph and possibly whittled the five exclamations down to none. And there was the small spelling change of campaign to champagne. But, my god, it sucked. There’s nothing like digging into the past to see how far you’ve come.

And so we move on, and what marks the end for some is the beginning for others. Congratulations to everyone on a job well done.

Laura Schneider
substantive editor

The road to success is always under construction -- Author Unknown

Read our bios here.