Grad profile: RoseAnna Schick (Creative Communications, 1995)
Like any writer worth her salt, Red River College grad RoseAnna Schick can pinpoint with acuity the childhood passions that paved the way to her career as a communications expert.
She remembers the diaries she began keeping as a seven-year-old girl, the makeshift office she set up in her bedroom, and the first time she was published — at the ripe old age of nine. (The story in question, a Yuletide tale of a little boy who wants to be an elf, won third place in a rural newspaper’s holiday fiction contest, netting Schick, now the head of local communications firm RAS Creative, an impressive $20 cash prize.)
She also recalls her first forays into publishing, as the self-appointed editor of a weekly newspaper launched while working a summer job as a counsellor at Camp Stephens.
“It was called Stephens’ Surroundings, and it was mostly gossip and a bunch of other stuff the campers weren’t allowed to read,” says Schick, who graduated from RRC’s Creative Communications program in 1995. “We had an old Gestetner machine — this was pre-photocopier — so I would hand-write the newspaper on a carbon sheet, then I’d have to crank out all the copies by hand. I’d stay up all night, writing these stories and cranking them out … that’s what gave me the idea that I really enjoyed writing for a purpose.”
Schick was drawn to RRC’s CreComm program while completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Winnipeg, after an instructor suggested she’d be a good fit. She signed up, thinking she was on her way to becoming a journalist, but soon realized she might not have the stomach for a career in hard news. Read More →