Experience

My journalistic experiences have extended far beyond Room 300 over the past four years. I've done my best to take advantage of as many opportunities as I can. View some of my most notable experiences below.

NSPA Conference 2023 - Boston

My biggest takeaways from this conference came at a SNO Sites Workshop I attended with my fellow Web EICs during this conference. This session took a deep dive into designing out stories using the new SNO Story Templates and also designing out different sections of the website using widgets and the SNO Design Options Panel. The skills we learned through this workshop allowed us to completely overhaul and redesign our website this year. Additionally, we were able to solve nagging problems on our website such as the Instagram feed with help from the SNO sites representative present at the workshop.

Ann Arbor Family Jr. Journalist (Summer 2022)

In May of 2022 as I was reading local news online, I came across an article written by a Jr. Journalist. This immediately piqued my interest and so I sent an email to Ann Arbor Family asking how I could become a Jr. Journalist. After a short interview process, I was in! My first story assignment was to write about Aashna Nadarajah, a local high schooler who founded a platform, Second Helpings, to encourage refugee and immigrant women to sell their own home cooked ethnic meals at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. Next, I wrote about Izzy Johnson, who created Entrails Magazine as an outlet for those living with IBD. Click on the images to the left to view these stories.

MIPA Camp 2022: Shoot Like A Pro

When I was placed in Shoot Like A Pro (SLAP) for MIPA Camp 2022, I was initially upset. I had been hoping to get off the waitlist for Bobby Hawthorne's writing class. Reluctantly, with a camera in hand, I attended the first session of SLAP. As we progressed through the week, however, I learned so much from the instructor, Michael Caterina, about photography and editing that I was able to take back to The Communicator. At a Pro-Am basketball tournament we attended midway through the week, I was amazed to realize I knew how to adjust the settings on my camera manually to compose pictures with good lighting in the dimly lit gym, while also keeping my shutter speed fast enough to capture the players movement in sharp images. In addition to this, we also went to a skate park and took pictures at the MIPA cup volleyball tournament. At the end of the week, I was awarded the Excellence award in SLAP. I ended up learning so much and truly had such a fun experience!

NSPA Conference 2022 - St. Louis

One integral experience for me at this conference was the website critique my fellow EICS and I attended. The adviser who critiqued our site gave us many ideas, a good amount of which we ended up implementing through the rest of the year. Additionally, at this conference I participated in the National Student Media Contest in the category news writing. For this competition, we were given one interview with a local St. Louis bookstore owner on the topic of banned books. After this we had one hour to write a 500 word news story about the bookstore. I was one of three students out of a field of hundreds to receive a "Superior" rating for my work.

CSPA Conference 2023 - New York

In the spring of 2023, my journalism class went to New York City for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference. It was my first time going to New York and I was stunned by how alive the city seemed to be. At the CSPA conference, one memorable session I attended was taught by Julia Satterthwaite, adviser of El Estoque, a website I often look at for ideas. Her presentation was on multimedia and she discussed multiple different resources her staff uses such as Knightlab. The other EICS and I took inspiration from her presentation and did our own presentation on multimedia back in Ann Arbor.

NSPA Conference 2021 - Los Angeles

In April 2022, The Communicator went to Los Angeles for the first NSPA conference since before the pandemic. This was my first out-of-state school trip and as a sophomore on a trip of mostly underclassmen, I was terrified. Through sessions I attended at the conference, I learned a lot about photojournalism and interviewing. The most important part of the trip for me, however, came outside the classroom. I learned to branch out during this trip and talk to classmates I didn't know as well. Over the course of this week I became close with multiple upperclassmen who I had simultaneously admired and been terrified of previously.