Journalism

Hello and welcome to my senior Journalism page.  In Journalism I acted as a staff member of the Animas Quill and helped to add content to the paper through a fiction serial that I wrote.

The first installment of the fiction serial can be found in the October 2013 issue of The Quill, which can be found on Page 21 of the link:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx2LzsKXecakNlE0ZTMtY1UtN0k/edit
In the serial, titled 'Errands', we are introduced to a pair of errand runners named Roland and Zinnia, who carry out 'errands' for the rich and powerful.  The first chapter introduces the main characters, as well as their primary mission.

The second chapter can be found in the November 2013 issue of The Quill on Page 22:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx2LzsKXecakU1l4MWJEM1ptUDA/edit
The second chapter details Roland and Zinnia's dealmaking with their new employer and the beginnings of suspicion towards him and the vagueness of the mission they face.

The third chapter can be found in the December 2013 issue of The Quill on Page 17:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx2LzsKXecakVFhDZ09mRUtUcGc/edit
Tasked with fetching a mysterious object from across the solar system, Roland and Zinnia begin their journey and attempt to piece together who their employer really is.

The fourth chapter can be found in the February 2014 issue of The Quill on Page 18, but cannot be linked due to the entry on the Quill's archive page looping back to October of 2013.
In this chapter Roland and Zinnia struggle to unravel the mystery surrounding their mission and discuss their backgrounds.  World building abounds in this chapter.

The fifth chapter can be found in the March 2014 issue of The Quill on Page 18:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx2LzsKXecakXy01UE81WFBsbVk/edit
Roland and Zinnia finally discover the identity of their employer, but just as the fog seems to be clearing things get even stranger.

Those are the stories that I have published in The Quill thus far, feel free to read them if you have not.

          REFLECTION

I hadn't written fiction of any sort for a long time before taking Journalism, and the realization that I still had it in me to write a story that was good enough to be published in a school newspaper pushed me to write other things as well.  Thanks to this class I did not give up on writing and have been writing heavily all throughout the year.  Admittedly I have used more than a little class time to do this, but I have turned in both my stories and edits on time for every single issue and contributed content which I hope has made The Quill a funner paper to read.
I learned a great deal in my time at The Quill as well, and honed my knowledge of how newspapers work.  Something that I first experienced during my time at the Durango Telegraph during my LINK internship in Junior year.  The feeling of having responsibility in how the paper would ultimately turn out was a great motivational factor in making sure that the job was done right, and I feel that my work ethic was made stronger during my time at The Quill.
Finishing this year of school, as well as this school altogether has made me realize that I've been very lucky to have spent time here and that though I may not have used my class time wisely all of the time, I have ultimately made the paper a better publication through my time here on the staff of The Quill.

              SELF-ASSESSMENT

For this year I would ultimately give myself a B.  The reasoning behind this is because although I have turned in my stories and completed editing on time, I have not made consistently good usage of class time.  I was absent a great deal, often without an excuse, and this harmed The Quill because it deprived it of staff during what were often busy periods in the paper's publication cycle.  Despite those shortcomings I have contributed greatly to the paper and what it means to every last student here at AHS.

Humanities First Amendment Exhibition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFD-bnjGDfc

It is often asked, why should students study the US Constitution in high school?  At first glance it does indeed seem like a valid query, unless you are planning on becoming a judge, lawyer, police officer or politician then you are not going to make extensive use of the Constitution in your daily life.  It may seem valid until the realization is made that even if many people don’t necessarily use it, the US Constitution is still a very important part of life in America and must be understood in order for people to realize how much it impacts their day to day lives.  From how we speak to our friends to how we interact with figures of authority the Constitution governs almost every aspect of our lives and studying it in school opened my eyes to many new facts that I did not know or truly understand until then.

Perhaps the most relevant thing that I learned while learning about the Constitution was how much its amendments, the First Amendment in particular, protected us from being taken advantage of by a potentially tyrannical government [1].  Freedom of speech guarantees the average citizen’s right to say anything covered by the various protected categories of speech, though as of now hate speech, fighting words, obscenity, slander and libel and incitements of violence are unprotected and thus the First Amendment will not help you should you say them to someone in earshot of a police officer [2].  Freedom of press cements your right to print anything you want to, from pamphlets letting people know about town events to anti establishment packets advocating the overthrow of the government.  Freedom to assemble peacefully guarantees one’s right to demonstrate and speak out against what they view as unfair practices or events that need to be changed or stopped altogether.  Freedom to redress the government for grievances gives citizens the power to petition the federal government and ask them to change things, for example the many thousands of petitions that have been filed to halt the war in Afghanistan and end the domestic spying done by the NSA [3].  Learning about how much these rights contained within the First Amendment really protected the American people from harm done by authority figures amazed me and made me immensely grateful to be living in a country that has such rights written into its constitution for everyone to enjoy.

However, even as I learned all of this I became aware that even if I did know a little about the US Constitution there certainly were no shortage of people out there who do not know anything at all about the constitution besides loosely affiliated catch phrases such as ‘freedom‘ and ‘American rights.‘  Having a population of people in this country who do not know anything about how the constitution protects their rights is ultimately detrimental to freedom and liberty due to those same people not knowing what limits their freedom and what doesn’t, which leads to ridiculous exchanges like those that we can see today on Capitol Hill, with many Senators and Representatives claiming that just about everything that the opposition passes will destroy American freedoms whilst steadfastly ignoring the gaping unconstitutional maw of the Patriot Act doing its best to swallow up the American people’s freedoms right behind them [4].  

But despite the ignorance that many people display about the constitution I cannot claim to be very much more educated about it myself.  I still have many questions to ask about that venerable document, chief amongst them is the query ‘why is there still no clear trend over what works in regards to governing the nation?’  In this country there are two schools of thought, one recommending that the government take an active role in governing the country through such things as education, welfare and economic regulations while the other school of thought advocates for the opposite path; a decreased federal role in everything that I just listed above.  In many other countries, Scandinavian ones in particular, they have had the same style of government for many years while also enjoying extensive civil and political rights.  I suppose it might be because we are still a very young country in comparison to many of the more venerable nations out there on the world stage but I’d think that in this age of unprecedented stability and globalism that we’d have decided on a path already.

In conclusion, an understanding of the US Constitution is essential in order to not only protect one’s rights but also to gain an understanding of how this country was founded and what the men who wrote our constitution had to go through in order to complete that document.  Ignorance of basic rights can and will lead to manipulation of said rights and examples of things like that occurring are sprinkled throughout history everywhere from Weimar Germany to Mussolini’s Italy [5].  To avoid the constitution being slowly shredded before our very eyes an understanding of it is required so that we can protect it just as much as it protects us.   

Citations 

[1]  "THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION." constitutionus.com. N.p., 17 Oct. 2013. Web. 17 Oct. 2013. <http://constitutionus.com>.

[2]  "Categories of Unprotected Expression." www.wneclaw.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013. <http://www.wneclaw.com/medialaw/unprotectedcategories.html>.

[3]  M., P. "Pardon Edward Snowden." petitions.whitehouse.gov. N.p., 9 June 2013. Web. 17 Oct. 2013. <https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD>.

[4]  Kashan, Sunya. "The USA Patriot Act: Impact on Freedoms and Civil Liberties." dc.cod.edu. N.p., 1 Apr. 2010. Web. 17 Oct. 2013. <http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1123&context=essai>.

[5]  "The Rise of Fascism." www.ocs.cnyric.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013. <http://www.ocs.cnyric.org/webpages/phyland/files/the%20rise%20of%20fascism.pdf>.