Scanner Reflection

Final Reflection

Throughout the first semester of this year I have participated in the journalism class at Cumberland High School. I worked on the paper my freshman year when it was still a written publication, by helping with the layout. However, as the years have gone by, my interests have changed, and for this year I wrote as a fashion writer for the Pop Culture page on the Scanner. I am glad that I took journalism this year, and I really enjoyed the class.

Throughout this year I have written an article every week that one was assigned, keeping up on all the articles. The majority of the articles that I have written have been about fashion, or topics surrounding fashion. The articles covered topics from Paris Fashion Week all the way to the Golden Globes Fashion. Besides the times that I was sick, I have kept up to date on my articles and have been an active contributor to the paper. Along with fashion articles, I have written a few school-centered pieces, including one about the Commissioner’s visit and another about the Drama Club. I feel that after my first few articles I became more comfortable writing in the newspaper format and I believe that I made good contributions to the Scanner. However, I did learn that I needed to double check my work because I had many spelling errors in my first article.

I enrolled in this course because I felt that it would be a good experience to have for college, and that it would be a fun and interesting class to take. Since I want to major in fashion merchandising there are many different job opportunities that could go along with that major. One of those opportunities could be writing for a fashion magazine, and I now have a portfolio of pieces gathered that could help with getting a job in the future. By signing up for the class I expected it to be fun and to learn something at the same time, which is what happened. I learned different hints and skills to help with writing in a journalistic style. I also enjoyed the discussions that we had in class, found the different issues interesting, and enjoyed hearing other points of view on the stories.

Overall I am very happy that I took journalism and I feel that I have learned a lot. As a student, I feel that I have contributed regularly to the paper and that my work ethic has remained persistent. Although my articles might not be worthy of the New York Times, I believe that I have submitted quality work and that not only have I learned from the class, but I hope other students have learned something from my articles.