…It just feels right. This post is dedicated to all of the wonderful people in my high school journalism classes, especially Derry, my assistant editor-in-chief, and Leila, our amazing teacher. I don’t think there are words to adequately describe our class, but I’m writing a post anyway. I took Journalism 1 as a freshman in high school, which met at the same time and place as Journalism 2-4. There weren’t many freshmen, but we all became friends and continued to take the class year after year until we were in Journalism 4 as seniors. The journalism classes were responsible for writing the articles for our school paper, and the higher level classes took on more responsibility, becoming section editors in charge of their content and layout. By sophomore year, I realized that I definitely did not want to write for a newspaper as a future career. I liked to write, but news was just not that interesting to me – I’d rather write about science, which I’m glad I figured out before I got to college. I started writing fewer articles and focusing more on learning Adobe InDesign, which came in handy when I took over as Editor-in-Chief during my junior year. Journalism was the place in high school where I felt most at home – I wasn’t consistently on sports teams or in theater or other major activities. We had a great group of people in journalism that returned year after year. Even when the lessons about the proper format for a news article start to fade in my head, I’ll always remember the people and the good times we had. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget the fonts and sizes I drilled into everyone’s heads or our dress code picture and the mysterious Twitter shark. We got our work done, and printed a pretty great paper compared to other schools in the county (except Centennial, there was no beating their paper. Ever. Ugh.) but we still had a good time. We ordered class shirts with our names and positions on the back. We threw our teacher a surprise birthday party, complete with food and Hello Kitty decorations. We went on field trips to the Newseum (if you haven’t been, I highly recommend it). We made time for white elephant gift exchanges and holiday parties before each winter break, celebrated the seniors’ last class every year, and had superlatives complete with useless prizes. I’ve lost track of most of the superlatives I won, but I remember being chosen as most likely to work on a newspaper in the future (or something along those lines). I think that was senior year, so I already knew I didn’t like writing news and I hadn’t decided if I’d join my college newspaper. I wasn’t sure any other group could compare to the one I’d spent my four years of high school with. Just in case though, I picked up a copy of the campus newspaper whenever I went on a college tour, and that may have helped me rule out some schools… Anyway, I didn’t immediately join The Triangle during my freshman year at Drexel, but the editor-in-chief came to speak to one of my classes and I realized how much I missed InDesign and the newspaper atmosphere. I contacted her later that week and from then on, I was in The Triangle offices at least two nights a week working on the news layout. Some of the other staff members became some of my closest friends on campus. When I was diagnosed right before I returned for my sophomore year at Drexel, The Triangle was what I knew I’d miss the most. I could take my classes online, but working on the newspaper from another state turned out to be impossible which was devastating. Even though I don’t plan to work on a newspaper as my career, I can’t imagine my high school and college experiences without The Shield and The Triangle. I wouldn’t know how much fun you can have while still producing a great product and I would’ve missed out on a lot of late nights, Wawa runs, and most importantly great memories with great people. Thanks to everyone who made those memories so special! I love you guys!
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AuthorI’m Karen. I was originally diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in August 2004 when I was 10 years old. When I was working on my college and scholarship application essays two years ago, I wrote about my journey. Although it was a rough few years, it became such an influential part of my life that I can’t, and wouldn’t want to, imagine my life without having had cancer. I called it the worst best thing that ever happened to me. Archives
April 2022
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