Note from the features editor:

Valerie Royzman

(Name of this thing) is a collection of interviews with a custodian (Mary Zieber), a student assistant at One Stop Student Services (Deshon Terrell), a maintenance repair worker (Donna Craver) and the director of the Washington Program in National Issues (Richard Robyn).

The stories are inspired by Studs Terkel’s 1974 nonfiction book “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,” a collective work capturing the everyday work life of lower-class individuals in America. Read an excerpt, “Women at Work,” here

Associate professor of journalism Jacqueline Marino and Professional-in-residence Connie Schultz crafted an assignment for “Feature Writing” students, where they had to mirror Terkel’s idea, only with workers of Kent State. (Name of the thing) is meant to show Kent State’s workers, quirks and emotions and all, along with the dignity behind their work. The pieces are written completely in the subjects’ voices. These working testimonials are written based on interviews conducted earlier this semester.