In regards to production skills I believe that I have gained a much better understanding of pho-tography this year. At camp I took a photography class and immediately fell in love with it, and ever since then I have been obsessed with it. In fact, I even went out and bought a $250 camera. My photography skills have increased 100 fold and all thanks to one class at camp. I didn’t have much trouble with deadlines this year because I learned how to complete my work ahead of time. The first deadline was extremely difficult because it was my first deadline designing ads, but I leaned from my mistakes, adapted immediately and was able to handle every deadline without trouble the rest of the year. My teamwork has improved greatly because I have developed substantial friendships with the new staffers. I consider Thomas, Molly, and Kinsey good friends of mine and really enjoy talking to them so I find it very easy to work with them and help them. I loved this year’s staff and plan to visit regularly next year since I’m staying close to home. My biggest improvement this year would probably be in the way of advertising because of my promotion to Business Manager. I learned how to design advertisements of course, but more importantly I learned how to cooperate with businesses and work with them in a professional manner, a skill that will significantly help me in the future. As far as journalism ethics goes I didn’t learn much more because I already had a firm under-standing and respect for them. I have learned not to cheat my stories by breaking certain ethics, mostly shift + enter, which I actually did not use once this year. This year I never once struggled with my dedication to the staff. Last year I found it difficult to stay dedicated to the staff at times because of my rigorous course schedule, but I was entirely focused this year and was always willing to help out as much as I could.

To me, journalism is a way for me to showcase my writing and develop it simultaneously in an exciting and constantly evolving way. Most people wouldn’t consider journalism to be the most exciting writing field, but I find each story I have to write, each new editorial, each sport I have to cover interesting and different. In that sense, every article I write challenges my writing skills and forces me to constantly approach topics and story ideas from different angles, thus diversifying not only my knowledge but also my writing style. For that reason journalism is so important to me; it has evolved my writing in a way traditional English classes never could. I got started in journalism my freshman year; I decided to take Journalism I because I need-ed another elective and I enjoyed writing, so journalism was the perfect fit. However, I never thought I would dedicate my entire high school career to journalism. After the first few months I found that much of the writing and research came naturally, and I truly enjoyed it, so I decided to pursue it. In order to succeed the biggest thing I had to do was manage my time efficiently. Time man-agement, to me, is the biggest part of journalism. It is okay to have fun with friends and goof around every now and then, but when work needs to be done people often lack the discipline to sit down and do it. This year I had more fun than ever in journalism, but I still got my work done because I managed my time well.

The most significant piece I wrote this year was my B. Sassy article where I profiled three bands and offered ways to find other bands like them. Since sophomore year music has been a passion of mine and I have devoted a large amount of my time to broadening my musical horizons and learning to appreciate new genres of music. With that article I felt like I was finally able to help expose the student body to extremely unknown yet talented bands that people could fall in love with. More importantly, I was able to discuss the importance of listening to different types of mu-sic. The subject has always bothered me and I was finally able to express my opinions in a public medium. There were five or six bands I wanted to discuss, but I could only choose three, and in the be-ginning I decided on Freelance Whales, All the Right Moves and Discovery, but eventually I made the decision to replace Freelance Whales with Two Door Cinema Club. The decision proved bril-liant because a few weeks after the article came out VH1 labeled Two Door Cinema Club a “You Need to Know” artist, affirming my decision. I received more positive feedback on that article than any other one I’ve written, something that really made me feel good about my writing and showed that people do read my article.

The piece that could use the most work would definitely be the “How to make it last” B. Sassy regarding relationships. Although the article was well-written, there were a lot of funny and im-portant topics I could have touched on, but I didn’t put in the proper amount of planning to truly maximize the column’s potential. For instance, one of my points was to “pay attention,” a fairly obvious piece of advice. If I had put more time into planning, the article could have been much more entertaining. The column didn’t change much from initial conception to final product except for a few revi-sions, but if I had the chance to do it again I would have made the most significant changes in the beginning. I remember being rushed the night before the article was due and throwing together sub-par ideas. By starting earlier I would have been able to come up with better ideas and made the article extremely humorous. Looking at the column piece now I still believe it was a well-written article, but it is difficult to face the fact that I could have made it one of the best of the year.

This is my favorite photograph that I took this year because of the lighting. It was taken at dusk as the fading sunlight can be seen on the left side of the pumpkin. However, it was dark enough where I could perfectly illuminate the inside of the pumpkin with beautiful contrast and definition. Also, coincidentally, the pool light creates an eerie blue film on the right side of the pumpkin. The varying types of light form a wonderful, crisp and creative image of my jack-o’-lantern on Halloween.

I was an asset to this staff in two substantial ways; as a comic relief and as an aid to the new staffers. It is no secret that I am the comic genius behind the terrific tandem that is Justin and I, and at many times the staff was far too on-edge and uptight, so I took it upon myself to lighten the atmosphere through my deft and witty humor. It has been my goal all year to make my senior year on staff as enjoyable as possible for everybody, and I believe I accomplished that goal to the fullest. I also made myself readily available to help every staffer with any questions they had, whether it be with grammar, style, or using the multiple Adobe programs. I can remember countless in-stances when I helped someone like Molly or Kinsey finish a COB or Thomas rewrite a sentence. I thoroughly enjoyed helping the other staffers too because I truly wanted to leave the staff in the most capable and experienced hands possible.

The biggest hardship I faced this year was the first deadline and designing all of the advertise-ments on top of the stories I had to write. I had never designed an advertisement before in my life, and all of the sudden I had 30 or so that I needed to compile for the first time. Although the designing was difficult, I found the most frustrating part to be communicating with the advertis-ers. I had to not only design the ads but make proofs, send them to the advertisers, make cor-rections and keep track of everything, all on top of a regular deadline. I almost missed deadline, but thanks to the help of Mark I was able to get everything done by the Friday before we went to press. I was able to learn a great deal from that first deadline: time management, getting started ahead of time, inDesign skills for designing, people skills, and much more. I was then able to take in all of that information and immediately apply it to the next deadline to make sure that I wasn’t as far behind. I was successful and had little difficulty in making deadline. Looking back I felt like I handled the situation extremely well. Even though I was more stressed than I had ever been on staff I was able to stay calm, manage every task efficiently and as-sure that I had all of the advertisements finished on time. Now that I’m able to reflect, I also think that my experience on staff was a substantial reason why I was able to handle the stress so well and is a vital asset to any future Business Manager.

I believe that my greatest weakness as a staffer is my knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator. I realized after senior issue that I have hardly any skills in those two programs except for a ba-sic understanding of how to manipulate pictures so that they are ready for publication. For that reason I decided to seriously challenge myself with my senior portfolio; I wanted to design the entire portfolio in Photoshop, but more importantly create a design that allowed me to explore the programs and learn them hands-on. Now that I have almost completed the design I can eas-ily say that my knowledge of Photoshop has multiplied by a factor of ten and that I am also far more educated in Illustrator. I used my portfolio to challenge my biggest area of weakness and it worked beautifully.

N7 Sports Commentary“Title is in Magic’s future”

Page 13 November 12, 2010

This piece allowed me to showcase my knowledge of the Orlando Magic by predicting how I believe the team would do during the 2010-2011 NBA season. The article was well-researched, coherent and provided in-depth analysis that only a dedicated sports enthusiast could provide. The article showcases my sportswriting skills as well as ability to convey information in an orga-nized and impacting way.

N5 Personal Opinion: Off-Campus Issues“The new sound of music”

Page 26 March 18, 2010

This column was my favorite one I wrote all year because it allowed me to discuss a topic I am extremely passionate about. The bands I previewed have grown in popularity since I previewed them, and although I’m not the reason it just proves that I knew what I was talking about. Also, I got more positive feedback from this column than any column I’ve ever written, so I believe it is an important piece that impacted people around campus.

N69 AdvertisementFancy Nail Tips

Page 26 March 18, 2010

This was my favorite advertisement because it was the only one that I designed from scratch. The only artwork I had to reference was a low-quality business card so I had to recreate the entire advertisement from scratch; I even drew the logo with the pen tool.

If only he had one more day...

I have grown tremendously over the past four years in every way imaginable. I have developed the skills to handle deadlines and meet them successfully, to work cooperatively and effectively with a large group of people, utilize programs such as Photoshop and inDesign, work profession-ally with businesses to achieve a specific goal and fight through adversity in all aspects of my life to do what is expected of me. I have been at both ends of the spectrum during my time on staff, from severe depression stemming from family issues to moments of extreme pride from the com-pliments I have gotten my articles, yet through it all I have been constantly growing; as a staffer, a scholar and as a person. When I read my old portfolio reflections I can see the evolution in my writing and in my frame of mind. I can see how I have matured and how my perspective has shifted; with each new year my insight has gotten deeper and my perspective of the staff has broadened. As far as the design of my portfolio goes, this year’s is light years ahead of the portfolios from sophomore and junior year. I spent four-to-five times the amount of time on the design because, as I’ve said before, I wanted to challenge myself in Photoshop. This year’s portfolio has signifi-cantly more color and incorporates aspects of Photoshop that the old portfolios didn’t such as layers and brushes.