Month: June 2023

My cookbook is here!!! After much anticipation, I was finally able to finish the printing process with the help of the amazing Copy Center employees. Printing this was quite the process, as I talked about in my Week 9 update. This week saw me getting all the color printing done and getting the books bound through the Copy Center.

I got hold of my first copy on Tuesday and was in awe that I actually did this. I committed to such a large project and saw it through till the end. I’ve never been more proud of myself than when I got to hold my cookbook for the first time.

I never told very many people, but a long time dream of mine was to write and publish my own book. I now got the chance to see that dream become a reality. I am just so ecstatic over my accomplishments this quarter!

After getting my first copy, I was also able to pick up all the color pages for the cookbook. Tuesday evening was spent on my floor, assembling the cookbooks to hand them over to the Copy Center on Wednesday for binding. Once I got into a rhythm it was a pretty quick ordeal.

As I organized all 20 copies, I kept getting more and more excited to see the stack of them all completed. I can’t wait for graduation when I can give my parents their copy! I haven’t let them see any of the pages since I want the dedication page to be something of a surprise.

I was so overwhelmed by the amount of people who pre-ordered my cookbook. I printed 20 copies expecting to have a few left over, with about 4 of those being set aside for family, but I sold out of all the first print. It was such an amazing feeling, and I’m already planning for a second printing in July. I am so humbled by the outpouring of support I’ve received. It feels great to be ending week 10 on such a high note. I don’t feel scared to graduate anymore, I feel so accomplished in what I’ve done here at Evergreen that all I am is excited to get started on my future!

This week was a mad-dash to finalize my cookbook draft and get started on the black & white printing. I first printed off some test copies at the library to make sure the formatting was right before printing the rest myself, and getting ready to send the color pages to the Copy Center. It honestly felt super hectic as I realized just how many pages I would be ending with, but I also felt super accomplished. I’m so excited to hold the final product in my hands!

I’m really grateful I had both my faculty to give me feedback on the layout. They helped me zero in on details that I had previously overlooked. If you ever decide to do something similar to this for your project, I highly recommend having at least two other people as your editors. After working on a project of this scale so long, it’s easy to get caught up in the big picture and forget about the small details.

Alongside getting the black & white printing out of the way, I also worked on getting a piece of my writing published in Overachiever Magazine, an online magazine that centers Asian women and gender nonconforming voices. They put out a call for submissions for their Asian Diaspora Issue in honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. One of the prompts was to reflect on your cultural identity, how it has changed and how you relate to it now. I thought it was serendipitous since it was so inline with the work I’ve been doing for my ILC and Senior Capstone Project this quarter. My cultural identity is heavily attached to food, so it felt fitting write a piece to submit.

I titled it “The Ghosts We Know & The Ones We Don’t” which felt like an apt descriptor. It was grounding to write this piece, finally giving myself the time to trace the steps of how I came to know myself and this part of my heritage. Writing this made me feel reinvigorated about my cookbook when I had been started to drown under the pressure a little bit this week. Taking this time to really reflect and refocus on why my project is so important to me, taking this opportunity to reignite my passion, was exactly what I need as the end of quarter slump started to creep in.

Feeling once more inspired, I can’t wait to get my first full copy of the Cookbook on Monday (hopefully). I sent my order in to the Copy Center on Friday and will bring in the black & white pages to be bound with the rest. Stay tuned for the final product!