Culture Editor Sofia Krusmark has always been interested in hearing and knowing other people’s stories.
“Whenever someone gets home or has something going in their life, I want them to tell me the story,” Krusmark said. “I’ve been doing that ever since I was a little girl. I always asked for all of the details.”
This desire to have a full understanding of the people she interacts with is one of the reasons that Krusmark began writing for the Collegian.
“I went to my first Collegian meeting my sophomore year, I jumped into the class, and I was just excited to start telling peoples’ stories that I lost any insecurity I had,” Krusmark said. “It was more important to share the stories of other people than to be lost in myself and whether I would write it well.”
Knowing her passion for storytelling, Krusmark worked at a variety of newspapers during her last two summers, which gave her access to narratives she would have never encountered otherwise.
In the “Summer after my sophomore year, I applied to be an intern at the Colorado Springs Gazette,” Krusmark said. “I got to interview Gene Kranz, the flight director for all of the Apollo missions. He talked to me about his friendship with Neil Armstrong and Kennedy.”
Writing for D Magazine in Dallas, Texas, Krusmark was able to tell a variety of stories including the renowned chef Amanda Freitag’s , opening her first restaurant in the United States, and how a girl named Katie canned a classic Texas beverage–ranch water.
Krusmark noted that despite these worldly experiences she still enjoys working in and around Hillsdale College’s campus.
“There’s a really special comfortability that I have in being able to write and edit the culture section in Hillsdale,” Krusmark said.
Noting the differences between these internships and her time at the Collegian, Krusmark explained, “they all lie under the same category, which is telling people’s creative ventures. And that’s what I love to do. Finding the ingenuity behind what a person is doing and how I can tell their story.”