My name is Valeria Rizo, and this is my last year here at West High. My senior year was filled with a lot of difficulties but ups. It went by very quickly and I cannot believe there’s only six weeks of school left. I remember the first day of my senior year like it was yesterday. I recall walking into journalism and being excited to produce news for our campus. I heard about journalism in my junior year and wanted to take it my senior year and it is something I do not regret. I learned information that I can carry with me for the rest of my education.
As of my education given before my senior year, it was a journey that I learned a lot from. My freshman year was spent behind a computer and I became someone I never knew I’d be. I became more introverted and was scared to talk to people because of how shut away all of us were from interacting with one another. Freshman year was hard mentally but I learned a lot about myself because of the amount of alone time I had. I sometimes wish my freshman year was in person but it taught me to be more grateful for the simple things such as just being able to see a friend everyday in person.
My sophmore year was overwhelming because everyone had on masks and my social skills weren’t up to par. Nonetheless, I made a lot of friends sophomore year that I still have by my side to this day. This year was one of my favorite years because I broke out of my shell and felt like I was getting the real high school experience. I went to a lot of events and even became part of a club. I excelled academically this year too. My junior year was my most productive year as I tried to do more school activities and just have fun. I kept all my grades up and made a lot of connections with people this year as well. I took a couple hard classes as well as some easy ones. My senior year I felt that I was trying to grasp every last second of high school and try to be grateful for the last moments I have left here on this campus. I want a good ending to my four years here as I move onto bigger things and that goal is almost accomplished. This year has been filled with happiness and fun. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished these four years and I think my younger self would be more than happy to see how my four years of high school went. I made it the best four years.
Journalism is a class I’ll never forget because it’s a class that’s student ran in terms of all that’s produced was made by the students. This year I made a lot of stories that fell into categories like sports, opinions, news, etc. It challenged me to be able to have a good range regarding the type of papers I could write about. One of my most memorable papers I wrote was Palestine vs. Israel. Authoring that paper made me realize the importance of informing people about serious problems going on in our world. It was a learning experience for me because I had to make sure all my information was accurate, and it was not biased written.
I was immensely proud of how that story came out. I focused on being one of the writers for our class and I was incredibly happy because I really enjoy writing. Aside from what we did in that class, I found this class very enjoyable. Everyone was like family, and we grew and learned from our mistakes so we could produce better material. Journalism definitely made my senior year fun and a new learning experience.
