When thinking of a Journalism class, most would think of students writing articles, and roaming around campus to interview students and Enochs staff. Though that is what we do, there is much more to the class than that.

If you don’t know, our online student newspaper is called “The Eagle Eye”, which is run by students in Journalism 3-4 and overseen by Mr. Campbell. Mr. Campbell, before he began teaching, was a Journalist for many years, so it’s interesting to hear his stories and makes it more impactful that he wanted to teach students what truthful a Journalist entails and how we can become one as well. Our main goal in Journalism and as the staff of The Eagle Eye is to publish interesting and informative articles with wide ranging topics to interest every student here at Enochs.

Last year, when I was a junior, I balloted for Journalism 1-2. At first I thought the class was more focused on writing articles and topics being assigned to you. However, after stepping into Mr. Campbell’s class, I realized it would be a whole different dynamic.

Yes, we did learn about journalism and what it takes to be a true journalist, but we’d all be involved in numerous discussions about world events and news. Which to me, made the class much more interesting and fun.

In my two years of being in Journalism, I’ve written countless articles and opinion pieces about different topics and issues that interested me. They’ve all ranged from teacher’s views, to campus life, to columns about my life as an Enochs student.

That’s the best part of this class. Mr. Campbell believes that we should write about topics that interest us because we’ll be able to make a much better article compared to one where we don’t connect with a topic.

This year, I was given the title of Managing Editor of The Eagle Eye. As Managing Editor, I work with the Editor in Chief, and we’d discuss which articles we’d like featured on The Enochs Eagle Eye website. Being made the Managing Editor has boosted my confidence in my writing and also as a person, because I was noticed for all of my hard work that I had put into my articles and also my involvement in the Eagle Eye.

One exciting thing that we’ve established this year has been our student run podcast called The Enochs Essence, which has so far been focused around sports, art and entertainment, and even some staff members here at Enochs. I’m glad to have been a part of establishing this podcast and am excited to see it take off in the next coming years.

For me, journalism has changed my high school experience and life for the better. After learning about journalism ethics, I can now read articles or watch the news and understand which is more biased or truthful, which I think is important. Many go through life without understanding the difference between unbiased and biased news sources, and this class helps you differentiate that.

Everyone in journalism and The Eagle Eye are all like a family. I liked how the class wasn’t strictly focused on articles or even journalism itself. We’d branch out on topics of discussion, whether it was about sports, entertainment, news, etc. I think having diverse class discussions is important because it helps you see that journalism isn’t just focused around politics or world events, there’s so much more to it. What’s nice is that most of the Advanced Journalism students were in last year’s Journalism class, so we all know each other and have strengthened our frienships.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed both this year’s journalism class and even last year’s, because I’ve learned so much about journalism and have written so many articles, all of which I’m very proud of. I’m definitely going to miss walking into Mr. Campbell’s Journalism class everyday and all of the friends I’d made over the past two years!