This Spider could tell stories for days

Rebecca Fradkin Barshop, ’16, always has a story to tell. Growing up, she wrote dozens of short stories and was editor-in-chief of her high school yearbook. Now she oversees digital and print publications as a managing editor for the American College of Chest Physicians.

Barshop’s writing journey flourished at UR. She was a writer and editor for the student newspaper, The Collegian. The leadership studies major was promoted to copy chief her sophomore year.

“You can study leadership theory all you want, but it’s not the same until you have a team and you need to work well with every different personality,” Barshop said. “I learned how to be a leader among my peers without necessarily being a manager.”

At The Collegian, Barshop met Mike Spear, former head of the journalism department and the publication’s faculty adviser. “You can’t meet him and not want to smile and laugh,” Barshop said. “He would come in and just throw chocolate on the newsroom desk. I didn’t know it at the time, but meeting [Spear] was a turning point for me.” He became one of the most formative influences on Barshop’s career.

Catching on to her budding editorial talent, UR’s Jewish chaplain at the time, Campus Rabbi Andrew Goodman, approached Barshop about taking her involvement with Jewish programming on campus to the next level. As a team of one, she soon launched Our Jewish Life, a four-page newsletter that ran until autumn 2016.

Her advice for students is simple: Stay curious, be solution-oriented, and don’t try to have it all figured out yet. “One of the great things about journalism and editing is that you have transferable skills that don’t tie you to a specific industry,” said Barshop, who has worked in everything from entertainment to finance to health care. “If you are a writer, you can write anything.”