Senior, B.S. in Journalism, Concentration in Magazine Journalism and Visual Design
B.A. Linguistics, Minor: Spanish, Concentration in Latino and Latin American Media Studies
When Jessa Hollett was young, one of her teachers assigned a self-portrait project. "Just draw the way you see yourself," the teacher said. Jessa was very excited, but her teacher chided her when she saw Jessa drawing a picture of a large and colorful butterfly rather than a stick-figure-and-happy-face rendering to match her classmates' portraits. "Jessa, that wasn't the assignment," the teacher reminded her. "Wasn't the assignment to draw the way we see ourselves?" Jessa asked. The teacher nodded. "Well," Jessa said, "This is how I see myself."
And, indeed, Jessa's life has been a life of changes, just like the life of a constantly changing butterfly. As a military kid, she moved around so much that by the time she landed in Texas, before her sophomore year of high school, she had been to nine schools in ten years. Now at her tenth school, the University of Texas at Austin, she prides herself on the adaptability that has come from such a nomadic life.
Work Experience: Right Brain, Left Brain
Jessa is very interested in visual design, particularly within the scope of creating a magazine. She is already well-versed in InDesign, PhotoShop, and Illustrator, and is learning photography as well as Flash, HTML, and a variety of other multimedia programs in order to become a part of the growing multimedia journalism world. She hopes to work as a designer for a magazine or a design firm after graduation. She is currently a design and editorial intern at Texas Banking Magazine. Her past work experience as a designer includes internships and design work with Brilliant Magazine, UT's Cactus Yearbook, BurntOrange Magazine, Border Cross Missions, and the University Catholic Center. She is the assistant project director of UT's chapter of the Society of News Design. She is also interested in multimedia journalism. As an intern for USAA's Youth Publications, she helped with the scripting and production of U-Turn Magazine's Podcast and fell in love with the new world of multi-dimensional multimedia journalism.
Jessa is a jane-of-all-trades, and she loves words as much as designing. She is currently a writer for McDonald Observatory Public Information Office, UT's Adelante Newspaper, and Longhorn Living. Her past work experience includes work at USAA's Youth Media Publications and The Daily Texan. She has an eagle eye for style and spelling, so she is a natural at copy-editing and has done copy editing work for UT's BurntOrange Magazine, as well as several other school-sponsored publications.
And a Little On the Side
Jessa is fluent in Spanish and has worked as an intern at the Center for Global Justice in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, researching about the effects of immigration on the family. She is co-founder and Director of Publicity and Outreach for Border Cross Missions, a non-profit organization that travels to poor areas of Latin America to complete volunteer work and provide much-needed resources. She is also involved with the leadership of the University Catholic Center's Longhorn Awakening Retreat, having been both a speaker and a staffhead. She has also been a counselor at Texas Bluebonnet Girls State, a camp that teaches and inspires high school girls about government, for the past four summers.
AustZine is an in-class project produced in Spring 2008 by the students
of J321 Fundamentals of Multimedia Journalism at the School of Journalism of the University of Texas at Austin. Questions or comments:rosentalves@mail.utexas.edu
