All About Me

Starting my first year of high school, I was nervous to find out how I would fit in; I did not know room 640 would soon become my home.

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When signing up for electives on my schedule, I remembered Mrs. Kincannon coming into my junior high English class explaining the fun of yearbook and journalism. I wanted to join in with the fun, so I signed up for both classes hoping to at least get one; to my surprise, I was put in both yearbook and journalism, yay!

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During my sophomore year in the 2019 school year, I underwent a hard time in my life. I let my anxiety get the best of me, yet journalism and newspaper were my escape. At the semester end, the two Co-Editor-in-Chiefs of our news media program decided not to return. I took this to my advantage; I became the leader I always wanted to be and helped the newspaper staff reach deadlines, since there was no longer an Editor-in-Chief to help us. After our first issue without an Editor-in-Chief, Mrs. Kincannon saw my hard-work and promoted me to Editor-in-Chief. I was ecstatic. At our year-end banquet, I received the news about being inducted as member into Quill and Scroll—to say I was proud was an understatement.

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Moving along into junior year during the 2020 school year, the news media team and I were faced with a rebuilding year. Only two other staff members besides me returned from previous year. I decided it was best to hold off on producing newspapers, and instead teach the new team members all about design and story writing. I wanted to be sure our team would be ready for the deadlines to come, which we were. Then the unthinkable happened: Covid-19. We had to push through the challenges of virtual schooling to continue coming out with timely content to our website. It was a hard feat, but we made it work.

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Now onto my senior year during the 2021 school year. We had a strong staff returning this year with seven new staff members to train. My adviser and I worked with the new staff members, while my team and I also worked on publishing to our website, Ikenews.com, and coming out with timely newspapers. So far, this year has gone by very well; we have come out with three issues of the newspaper with plans to come out with two more. We also set up an online posting schedule to ensure new stories are posted to the website every weekday.

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While I did not think journalism would turn into my passion, it certainly has. I plan on attending the University of Findlay to major in Equine Studies with a minor in journalism. In 10 years from now, I hope to see my byline in a horse magazine.