High school, for many people, is a seemingly perpetual loop of school bells, extracurricular activities, and piles of homework, with a dash of sleep deprivation as well. This is the typical four years that millions of teenagers experience. During my four years in high school, I have experienced these things, taking advanced classes, getting involved in every way I can and trying to make my high school experience truly special. I never wanted to simply skate by on passing grades and cliche clubs. I wanted to shine, and I wanted to make a difference.
I started out in Introduction to Journalism during my freshman year. To say that it was an experience is definitely an understatement. When I entered high school, I was quiet and shy. I stood at 5’1”, looking up at the world with naive and fearful eyes, soaking everything in as I realized, shocked, that there were boys here with beards! There were 18 year-olds here-- legal adults! As a small freshman, I was terrified of this new world.
There was an assignment I was given during this introductory course that forever changed my life. I can distinctly remember my teacher blindly flipping through a yearbook, closing her eyes and pointing a random photo on a random page. The world seemed to slow as she looked up and said the most terrifying words that had ever been said to me thus far in my life: “You will be writing a feature on this person.”
I had to do what?! She had to be kidding. This was a joke. Little me with the voice of a mouse had to talk to a… senior?! Oh no. This was the end of the world. The death certificate would read, “Cause of death: Forced to be outgoing.”
Except-- brace yourself for a major plot twist-- I survived, got an A, and lived to tell the story. Shocking, right? And here’s the even more shocking part: it wasn’t even that bad. In fact, I credit that assignment with being the reason I am as outgoing as I am today.
That assignment-- that terrifying, death-defying stunt-- is the reason I continued with journalism. I liked the person I was turning into, and I wanted to see how else this wonderful and transformational field of study could affect me.
It was the best decision I could have ever made.
Without journalism, my high school experience would not have been my high school experience; it would have been someone else’s. I would have dragged my feet through math and English classes, perpetually bored. Four years would have felt like four hundred. With journalism, however, the years have flown by and I am excited to pursue a continuation of my journalism education next year.
Journalism has dared me to be outgoing, to seek truth in everything. It has taught me to look at the world with a critical eye, being wary of bias from every news source. Journalism has driven me not only to seek truth but to be the truth-- to speak what is unspoken and to shout when others try to shut me down.
It is why I have chosen to encompass my portfolio entries under the umbrella of “Be the Change”, because that is what it means to me to be a journalist. It means not backing down when forces stronger than us try make us quiet; it is our job to speak over the voices that patronize us and try to shut us down. It is our job to bring light to shadow and voices to the voiceless, to, in this way, bring change about the world.