Megan Jones steps down from position

The office of Megan Jones, managing editor of Perceptions, is lined with little canvases. The one showing a hedgehog puffing on a pipe with pink bubbles, and a picture from a little kid – a hedgehog with yellow spikes – stand out the most, however.

“I have a hedgehog,” said Jones. “My niece drew that, of Edith Ann (Jones’ hedgehog), I think. It’s sort of like my personality – big and soft on the inside, but prickly on the outside.”

Perceptions is MHCC’s own literary magazine. It’s published once a year, and according to Jones is “completely done by students. We try to keep it totally in-house.”

Jones, who has been the director for twelve years now, is on her last year of working on the magazine. Collecting submissions, talking to editors, producing ads, are all in a day’s work for Jones, who is also an academic adviser at Mt. Hood.

“The only time it really feels like work is when I have to remind my editors (to complete tasks). It is enjoyable,” she said. “That’s why I’ve stuck with it so long.”

Jones considers the magazine as much a work of art itself, as the content in it, she said, while scanning the art on her own walls and eventually landing back on the hedgehog.

“I think the pipe is mirroring the same thing because when you think of a pipe you think of like a crusty, old man, but then you see the bubbles, so it’s like, ‘Awww, you’re a kid, too,’ ” she concluded.

Hedgehogs and bubbles aside, the magazine stays pretty grounded. This year, it will feature some content from places as far away as China and Russia. Jones said that when she started, her goal, “was to get a lot of people to submit, and to get really awesome work,” and she believes she has succeeded, to some extent. “We are definitely getting better at it.”

Despite Perceptions’ growing weight in the local literary world, Jones stays low-key. “I don’t even know how the word got out, to be honest,” she said with a chuckle.

Jones’ adventures in English at MHCC are coming to an end, though. “I’m leaving MHCC and Perceptions, which will be super weird for me because I’ve worked here since 1999, in one position or another,” she said.

“The reason is that I’m getting my graduate teaching degree. January through June 2015, I will be completing my full-time student teaching – six weeks with some lucky middle school social studies victims, and then 12 weeks with high school math students,” she explained.

After Jones leaves, writing and philosophy major David Ahlson will take over.

Ahlson said he has big shoes to fill, and that “it’s kind of a loss. Megan has been doing this for 12 years, so it is sad to see her leaving, but at the same time it is good to get some new blood pumping. It’s a little bittersweet.”

He doesn’t doubt the direction Jones is leaving the magazine headed toward, however.

“What I love about is that it is a literary magazine of the arts. I think they mimic each other (life and art), I think it is totally synergistic. They feed off each other,” Ahlson said, giving credit to Jones for this “lasting legacy.”