● National Student Journalist of the Year Runner-Up ●
About Me
My Introduction to Journalism
I like to say that I have been a journalist since the ripe age of 9. In the fourth grade, I was my elementary school’s representative on my school district’s monthly broadcast, TETV News. Little did I know the path on which this one-off broadcast would lead me. In middle school, I joined the campus newspaper club and covered everything from new teachers to students' Halloween costumes. It was groundbreaking, enterprising journalism, to say the least. It was not until high school, however, that I truly began reporting the news and discovering my passion for storytelling.
Fourth grade me preparing for the November 2015 edition of TETV News. l spoke to the community about the goings-on at my elementary school.
The Spoke: My Pride and Joy
My freshman year self admiring the print edition of The Spoke, unaware of how much I would fall in love with the paper, its staff and journalism.
As a wide-eyed freshman, I walked in (rather, I logged on) to my first day of high school hoping for the best, fearing the worst. I started my day with the usual: Biology, English, World History, Spanish, the list went on. Then I got to 8th period, The Spoke. On day one, all I knew was that this thing, The Spoke, was the school newspaper. But, some 1,200 days, 24 print issues, five faculty advisers, four years and a few run-ins with school district officials and lawyers later, this thing became my life and the people within it, my family.
Finally stepping (this time, physically) into a sense of normalcy and routine after my freshman year, I served as the Copy Editor and News Editor of the newspaper in my sophomore and junior years of high school, respectively. I got to work one-on-one with reporters and discovered my love for pushing others to develop their journalistic abilities. Now, as a senior, I serve as the Editor-in-Chief of The Spoke, overseeing a team of more than 60 people, from editors to reporters to photographers to cartoonists. I have covered everything from student-led walkouts that hit the national news cycle to my school's boys' soccer team winning the state championship. Recently, I covered President Joe Biden's 2024 presidential campaign kickoff in person and interviewed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on the one-year anniversary of his gubernatorial inauguration.
Story by story, The Spoke took over my high school career. It came with some costs: losing sleep, a helluva lot of stress and a couple of premature gray hairs (yes, seriously. I'm only 18, I know!). But for every tally under the cons list, there have been a thousand pros. And I wouldn't have had high school any other way.
Good Morning, Conestoga
Print journalism was just not enough for me. I mean, why not add something else to my plate? After taking the Beginner and Intermediate Television Production courses in my freshman and sophomore years, I joined my school's television news program and immediately started anchoring, reporting for and directing the daily morning announcements show, Good Morning 'Stoga (GMS).
This is not some dinky, hole-in-the-wall, high school production: our studios are equipped with five state-of-the-art cameras, multiple green screens, a professional rig and industry-standard control room technology. This is where I start my mornings.
Every morning at 8:37 a.m. I present the news to Conestoga High School's students, staff and community members on live television.
I will be heading up to Northwestern University in the fall, where I plan to pursue a B.S. in Journalism with a minor in Legal Studies.
What's Next
Who's to say? For now, there are a couple of certainties. For one, I will be proudly heading up to the Chicago suburbs this September to start a new chapter of my life at Northwestern University (Go 'Cats!). I will further my passion and love for news and storytelling at Northwestern's world-renowned Medill School of Journalism, where I aspire to write for The Daily Northwestern, covering campus, local and national news.
While I will be leaving Pennsylvania, I will not be ditching the state's New Voices campaign. Illinois is already a New Voices State (read more about what this means here), but Pennsylvania still has some work to do.
That is all months — and years — away. For now, I continue to report.
My State Senator, Carolyn Comitta, honored me with a citation at the Pennsylvania Capitol Building after the Pennsylvania School Press Association named me the Pennsylvania Student Journalist of the Year and the Journalism Education Association named me a runner-up in the national competition.