Meryl Williams graduated from Muskingum in Dec. 2007. She was a journalism major and is from Caldwell, Ohio.
Williams’s mom worked as a reference librarian at Muskingum. When Williams toured the campus as a senior in high school, she fell in love, especially with the lake.
After graduating, Williams I moved to Columbus, where she took a job working for a weekly newspaper. Williams says, “I was lucky enough to have a built-in network of Muskingum grads there, so it was an easy transition.” Williams lived in Columbus for three years, sharing apartments with three different friends from her days at Muskingum.
“After three years in Columbus,” Williams decided to make a big move: “to Chicago to see what life in an even bigger city would be like. I've been here ever since. I work at Groupon, which I love, because everyone is around my age and it's a ridiculously fun work environment with great company culture.”
Although Williams no longer works for a newspaper, she started her own! She runs a neighborhood news site about Chicago’s 60625 ZIP code, which covers her neighborhood, Lincoln Square, as well as Albany Park.
In the summer of 2013, another Muskie, Amanda Mlikan, ’13, interned for Williams at 60625.
Muskingum was a great place for me to be. I remember not wanting to go to college that close to home, but over the next four years I really came to appreciate how nearby I was to my family. My brother's time at Muskingum overlapped with mine, so I was REALLY close to them! Now that I am further away I am glad I had that extra time with Owen and my parents.
Williams cites her time in the journalism department and working with the Black and Magenta as important experiences for her: “[Both] taught me a lot about what it was going to be like to work at a paper full-time. Dr. Wagner encouraged us to write about what we were already naturally interested in, and that helped me cultivate my skills in a really crucial way.”