What motivated you to join the journalism club back in your freshman year?
What motivated me to join my freshman year when it was just a club probably was the culture. It was just starting, and there were so many avenues we could follow, and we were the historians of the school. The first of the athletics and the music department, all of that would be written about in the paper, and we were able to do that, and that’s something truly special, especially in a new school.
Obviously there were a lot of members of the production that ended up leaving and not staying for all four years. What do you think motivated you to stay involved for so long?
I wanted to stay because it’s sort of like gardening: you plant the seed and see how it grows, and it becomes so much better than how it started out. I wanted to see it to fruition, and I knew it would only grow and blossom more, but to see how new positions work -- we didn’t do any multimedia in the first year besides photos, and now you see photos and our quick reaction to the COVID-19 situation. I wanted and I was excited to see how to make the paper better. To be a part of the root system of the Portola Pilot, it’s an opportunity that you won’t ever get again. It’s such a rare opportunity, and I was that lucky person to be able to do that, and it’s unforgettable, and I didn’t want to let it go and just give up on it after a year or two. I wanted to see it get even better because I knew it could.
Speaking about those personal relationships, could you talk about the community experience of being in the Pilot. Maybe expand upon the friendships you’ve formed with the other four year members or just other members of the production in general.
Friendship is probably one of the greatest parts of being in a production-style class.You get to know a lot of different people and personalities, and it’s not where you’re in these seating maps; you get to move around constantly and work with different people, and you’re not stuck with a certain assignment. With all that communication, you’re going to make inside jokes, you’re going to make some crazy group chats and very long spams of 500 texts that you cannot catch up with, but it is just the culture of our classroom. It’s very sporadic, and if you want to make friends, you’re going to. You really get a tight circle, and you just rely on other people and they rely on you.
Could you talk about the relationship that you were able to form with Ms. Rapp and what she’s meant to you as a mentor and teacher?
She is definitely a structured adviser. She gives you structure so you can be free with other things, and she’ll challenge you to always be better. Her expectations are high because it’s the only way to get us to those awards. I know junior year it was really hard for all of us because we were in our junior year, and most of the publication was the class of 2020, so it was difficult, and we got through it, and we have that reward of finishing well and finishing strong. She is ever improving; there’s never a moment where she’s completely satisfied with the paper. She always wants us to see our successes and our weaknesses so we can grow upon that and create more successes and then continue to work on our weaknesses.
What would you say is your favorite story you’ve written, or maybe most memorable story?
Immediately, the first story that comes to mind is the Japanese veteran story. Coach Anzai had to be honored. I don’t think he should be thankful; I should be, because I got that experience to tell a story that had to be told. It would be so sad if it wasn’t, because it’s so inspiring, and it reflects our culture here. It’s very diverse. We have Asians, Japanese people here, and for them to hear that story and understand that Coach Anzai was the first Japanese colonel to be in the air force, it really is kind of a dream story. We all aspire to be someone like who he is, and just the whole time I was writing the story I had that pressure to make it even better, and I know I could even make it better, but just the fact that he was so grateful really touched my heart and it wasn’t even a moment of being a journalist; it was an American and a citizen that really respected what he had done for us, and I just did that through words.
Do you envision yourself continuing to do newspaper after high school either in college or somehow involved in your career?
Whether you’re on the far spectrum of STEM or one the far spectrum of humanities or in between, it doesn’t matter, if you have a great idea and you don’t know how to communicate it in words, then there is no point. My dad told me that if he had the cure for cancer, and he didn’t know how to communicate it, then what’s the point? What’s the point of a great mind, great idea, great research if you can’t share it with other people, and journalism has made me a storyteller, and even though I’m not writing other people’s stories anymore, I can write my own in the future, and I’m looking forward to it.
What will you miss the most about the Portola Pilot?
I’m really going to miss the people. You don’t spend four years, three years or two years with people in a production-style class as I talked about and not miss them. Because if you take away the people, you don’t have a production; you don’t have the Portola Pilot. It’s the people that make the class fun, that make newspaper something worthwhile. It’s really bittersweet that I can’t take them with me to college. We’re going to go our separate ways, and I’m not going to see them everyday or every other day. I’m definitely visiting the school in the summer hopefully, or even in the winter, but I’m going to miss the class of 2020 because I’m not going to see all of them again.