It’s very hard to describe how much this journalism program and the newspaper class has done for me because truly it’s done it all. I’ll always remember getting a little sheet of paper in another class that invited me to interview for the newspaper class. And the decision to take up the offer was possibly one of my best decisions of my high school career. 

Going back to sophomore year in the newspaper class, I don’t think I ever felt new or scared of the people around me. It all just felt natural, I loved it. A huge thanks that I gotta give is to Lane Shaffer, who taught me pretty much everything about newspaper and supported me through finding my own voice in journalism. 

Fast forward to junior year when I became the sports editor of the newspaper and also joined the editorial leadership class. This was the year when I really felt like I found my footing with creating stories and finding my own voice. Someone I have to give a thanks to was Lincoln Wheeler and Thisbe Delemarter. 

And now in my senior year. I genuinely don’t know where the time has gone. Maybe it was because this class made it fly by. Something that’d I’d have to take away from this year was that it showed me that I could do anything in the journalism world. A huge thanks I would give to this year would be my amazing editorial board of Sebastian Gracie-Fultz, Maxson Peters, and Aria Peters. 

This class opened my eyes in a way that I don’t think any class could ever recreate. It let me meet people I’d think I’d never meet. And created connections beyond just the newspaper class. This class also created a sense of community that I don’t thank any other class could recreate. Of my three years in this class, I was always excited to go and interact with some of the best people in this school (in my opinion). It truly made me fall in love with journalism. It’s very hard to thank some of my classmates in such a strict word count limit but I’ll try.

Thank you to Lane and Eva for teaching me everything about journalism. Thank you to Anthony for being a good friend that sophomore year. Thank you to Lincoln for being a teacher yet one of the funniest people I’ve met. Thank you to Thisbe for always holding us together last year and making news stories. Thank you to Maxson and Val for being some of the nicest friends I’d thought I’d never meet, y’all are the best and I’ll never forget New York with y’all. Thank you to Oliver for always being my best friend in class and supporting me through anything. Thank you to Jack for always having that same love for sports journalism as I do. Thank you to Emma, Em, and Aria for being some of the coolest people I know. Thank you to Alex, Sula, Anna, and Simon for being some of my closest friends and giving the class a try. Thank you to Sebastian for being one of the smartest, kindest, funniest friends I’ve ever met in newspaper class and helping me throughout this year in pretty much everything. And finally, thank you to SB for always supporting me, helping me, teaching me, providing opportunities for me, and caring for me throughout these three years of newspaper. Best teacher I ever had. 

I will forever be grateful for this high school journalism experience and program that’s taught me so many things that go farther beyond just newspaper. And going into college and then life, I don’t think I’ll ever get to recreate the type of community I felt in the Newspaper class. It’s an experience I’ll never forget.