UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN River Falls
Admissions
Hired Before Graduation
Name: Samantha Peine
Company: Publishing Specialist, JETPUBS Inc.
Hometown: Hastings, Minn.
Major: English – professional writing, communications minor
A 10th grade English teacher helped spark Samantha Peine’s love for the English language – a love she has carried with her throughout her college career and a love that will guide her into her first job after graduation.
"In high school, I had a teacher that I loved and I’m still very close to. She was my 10th grade English teacher and she was a great, influential teacher that I built a really good relationship with,” she says.
"I’ve always really liked reading and English and the language in general and I always tell people I love words,” Samantha explains. “I love to write. Grammar has always been very appealing to me.”
"Being able to go into a field that has those aspects that I love and being able to work with words and work with writing and having people trust you to take their words and make them more cohesive or make them flow better, that’s something that’s really appealing to me," she says. "Being able to take my passion and put it into my work is really exciting.”
Now a senior at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Samantha, a Hastings, Minn. native, is set to graduate in May with a degree in English with an emphasis in professional writing and a minor in communications. Just a week after commencement, she’ll start work as a publishing specialist at JETPUBS Inc., a Wisconsin business specializing in aviation training materials and manuals.
"I will be working with four other publishers. We will work with revising manuals – all aviation related. I’ll work with editing them and proofing, quality control, making sure that they match exactly in print as they do online because we have an online portal for them,” she explains.
While she’ll be a newly minted UWRF alumna when she starts work, Samantha won’t be new to JETPUBS. She spent last year working as an intern for the company, a position she stumbled upon at the UWRF Career Fair. After connecting with the company at the Career Fair, she applied and was offered an internship working with the publishing staff. A positive internship experience led to her full-time offer of employment and Samantha is grateful for the opportunity to build a career with the company.
"I really like the company because it’s small. It’s really close-knit and very tight. We bounce ideas off of each other,” she says. “If you ever need help, it’s easy to be like, ‘Hey, can you help me with this?’ and everyone will. We have weekly team meetings to catch everybody up and collaborate. I think the owners work really hard to keep everybody close, so I appreciate the tight-knit community it creates.”
The move from intern to full-fledged team member is a transition Samantha is looking forward to.
"It’ll be different to be full time. I have always felt very appreciated there, even as an intern. I think it will be cool to be there full time and engage that much more and get to know people that much more.”
A small, close-knit company with the ability to collaborate with teammates is the type of work environment Samantha was aiming for and is a continuation of what she has found in college.
"My teachers [at UWRF] have known who I was. I wasn’t a number. They could really provide me with time and wanted to provide me with time when I needed help,” she explains. “I will take away from here a very good experience, especially being able to engage with my professors and getting to know them on a personal level.”
"But I’ve also loved the small-town feel. Being able to walk up and down downtown. You know the people here. It's a safe, tight-knit community. It’s been a good place for me,” she says. "It’s a very personable campus. There’s a lot of opportunity out there and I think it’s important that people take those opportunities and just go for it.”
