Olive Hwang
College fourth-year Olive Hwang is a Biology major, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies minor, and pre-med track student from Indianapolis. Not only is Olive an (AP) style icon who has worked on production at the Review for three years, Olive also regularly contributed to the News and Arts & Culture sections. Next year Olive will be taking a gap year to apply to medical school but will have fond memories of studying in Azariah’s Café, healthy discourse around style conventions, and late-night shenanigans in the Review office.
What is a favorite Review memory that you have?
Ice skating this winter was really fun. So we got together to ice skate outside and then wound up playing a big game of Red Light, Green Light. Because the rink was synthetic, it was really funny watching people race across a surface that was not conducive to the game at all, and it was really hard to move forward on it. We all just looked really ridiculous trying to race… I think it’s goofy stuff like that, that’s made working with the Review so memorable. We take our work seriously, but we leave plenty of room to have a laugh. It just makes me very happy.
What is a pre-pandemic tradition that you loved the most and hope comes back?
During lulls in production, we’d play darts in the office. It was a good way to let off some steam during work hours. People got really competitive and it was funny to see how hyped up everyone was. It kept the energy in the room, like at a really high level, which was fun.
Who was the best dart player?
Not Christo [Hays]. Jimmy [Holland] was pretty good at it. Jimmy and Ivy [Fernandez-Smith] probably.
Do you have an accomplishment or skill that you are most proud of from your time at the Review?
I would say two things. One of them being the special issue that we did covering a lot of environmental issues. The team put in a lot of extra work and time to make that possible, and we wound up with a very beautiful magazine. Just having something in that format, which we’d never done before, it was really cool to see that product. On an individual level, I think I’ve grown a lot as a writer. I think working as a copy editor has really helped me improve as a writer, just because when you’re reading so many things, you get a sense of what you like, what works, and what doesn’t work. I feel like it gave me some tricks to have up my sleeve as I write. I think I’ve become more concise and I have more variation, vocabulary, sentence structure, which has been good.
If you were a style rule what would you be?
Oh my gosh. I put so much thought into this. I was like scrolling through the style guide, like which one of these do I relate to. I would go with healthcare as one word. So we used to follow AP style for that and have healthcare as two words. But when we last revised the style guide, I really pushed for us to change that… I’m definitely a rule follower for the most part. But I think it’s important that we remain critical of the status quo and change things that don’t serve us. That’s part of what I love about copy editing. It’s a fine balance between consistency and flexibility. And that’s really neat, I think that’s cool.
Do you have any final reflections about what it has been like working this year with the pandemic?
I just love how close you become as a staff. It’s been much harder to stay connected this year, obviously, but we found a way to make it work. And I’m very glad that I got to spend so much time with people. These are people for the most part who I’ve worked with for years. It’s been really fun to see everybody grow as editors and writers, and as a group.