(Photo courtesy of me, featuring some old journalism class members)
The real, last article.
So, I’m no longer going to be in journalism. This marks my last official article before I graduate and move on to greener grass, I guess.
It’s interesting, seeing my older articles in comparison to my new ones. I don’t know if 7th grade me would understand anything I wrote this year, with an exception for my lost media stuff. I did get started writing about it back in 8th grade.
I think after junior year, when I literally wrote only a handful of articles, I really had to amp it up for senior year. So, I kick started this year with writing (possibly) the longest article I have written, possibly in the history of the website. From there, a trend formed. I started talking about the internet in a wider scope; Technofacism, AI, piracy, even fandom culture and how it corresponds to violence in online communities.
Unfortunately, things in these areas haven’t changed, especially in regards to the internet and censorship. Heck, things have shifted politically that I wish I could’ve sat down and written about.
One of the more important articles I’ve done, other than the ones directed towards internet issues, were the ones I’ve done on the myth of queer people “grooming” children and the rise of hate especially towards trans people. Sadly, that’s only gotten worse with time.
It hurts. Everything hurts, really. It pains me to see a community get deemed as anti-American, and for what? Existing peacefully? Because they differ from the norm?
This is why I took journalism. Well, more like “stayed” in journalism.
I grew up different. My ways of thinking and the way I expressed myself (which was often in writing) wasn’t exactly celebrated by my peers, and my teacher’s lesson plans never included anything about true, creative writing. So, all my thoughts on the world around me and my interests that I was outcast for having stayed dormant in journals and notebooks that I might still have to this day.
Then, when COVID happened and I had to do my course selection for middle school, journalism caught my eye. From there, I started writing about cartoons and news in the animation world, because that was the dream of a 7th grade, 14 year old me. She wanted to be an animator, so that was all she would talk about.
Even in all my unpolished works, I actually had fun with the class. So, I took it again in 8th grade. Then freshman year. And, you get the gist. While I did stay because I enjoyed the work, it wasn’t until sophomore year I actually started staying for the people.
I stayed for the early morning coffee talks I had with the first journalism teacher, Mr. Hancock. It was something that brought me structure and quite frankly, comfort, during such chaotic and stressful years of my life.
I also ended up staying for the connections– all the fun conversations I’d have with all the acquaintances and friends I made through the class, even if we weren’t all that close, hanging out in the back of the K-Mesa room gossiping or talking about hang outs oftentimes would make my day.
Okay, back to the articles.
Now, I started talking more about the general world of the arts. I did talk about art therapy once, my journey joining with the school’s art club, my senior exit project where I donated canvas paintings to a charity, even to the modern world of art. They were my brain breaks of sorts in between all the techno-political topics that were important to write, but less fun to actually write about.
Of course, I spoke about lost media as well. My last article, the one about the play about the AOL data leaks, was probably the most fun I’ve had writing an article since my article on the May Day mystery.
I think the key takeaway from this is just that, creative outlets are so important to have on hand. Literally the running joke I have is how this program felt like to me “writing about my interests and calling it work.”
To an extent, it’s true. Human interest is important to have in a pool of, well, news. However, this program gave me the platform to showcase the interests I’ve been called “too weird” for expressing to most people in person.
Most people I knew weren’t interested in arts the way I am, and less people were interested in lost media like I am. But with journalism, I was able to not care about what others thought and just write about something I like and care about. Sometimes it’s about the art scene, sometimes it’s about lost art. Sometimes, it is about the threats to art at large– to media at large.
But, this program was a lot more than that, I’m aware. It was a community. An almost secretive, underground community (given how there weren’t always a lot of people per yearly class), but it was a community nonetheless. Something that I will cherish for as long as I can moving forward onto college, where hopefully I’ll still be writing my weird stuff there. I may be going to be a studio arts major, but I’ll make it work.
All I can ask for from this program is to continue being such a free, creative space for many others like me, who can use this space to freely express their interests, and they, too, can call it work. Or maybe, just maybe, someone can write weird stuff like I once did before. Carry on my legacy, so to speak.
(Oh, and maybe tone done the AI usage. It pains me to see so many students AND teacher result to AI for writing, featured images, and ideas this year. Seriously, cut that out.)
Support the arts, man.
