REFLECTION
Spring 2025 Reflection
Having been in publications for my entire high school career and stepping into a new position on an entirely new section this year, I came into the Rubicon room daily with a goal to try a new version of my usual workflow, and left the first semester with the goal of continuing to improve on branching out. I’m happy to say that overall, this goal was met for nearly every page on Mixed Media this year, even through many unexpected changes. The variety of topics covered has been very diverse, as has been the multimedia elements for each of the stories.
Outside of journalism, I’ve been working on observing myself and the ways in which I can work to my fullest potential, and I’ve found that lowering the entry level for each part of the writing process seems to turn out the most productivity. Over the course of this year, I developed a new way of writing stories which involves organizing quotes and research into bullet points before turning the information bits into “sketches” of pararaphs which can be refined into full sentence pieces. I’ve also found myself becoming less afraid of talking to people in the school and writing stories which helped me get to know other parts of the lives of my peers, something I strive to showcase in my writing as well.
As for trying new things for the whole staff, increased social media interaction sounds like a good idea, especially through video. In a similar fashion to traditional YouTube channels, I think teasing clips of videos going up on Rubicon TV or having direct links to podcasts on Instagram stories might drive more interactions with people looking for a shorter, visual way to find out what’s been going on with SPA lately. In terms of our staff’s work, I discussed with the print staff about having people get to know the ins and outs of InDesign outside of creating pages as to access these skills earlier in the year or during moments where we have more class time, and furthering editors’ knowledge on other design elements such as our standards for creating infographics or SPA thinks that would speed up the design process when we are in paste-ups.
I greatly appreciated the staff culture in print this year, where our fun interactions over the group chat are not only memorable but also helped us get to know each other better in a way that further forges that sense of community and ease of communication which makes paste ups and late nights easier and more enjoyable. I had been going through some of the worst times during February and March, and I always felt supported by editors who helped devise backup and alternate plans whether it was for their stories on my section or vice versa.
I feel that I am at a bit of a crossroads with my personal journey in journalism and SPA publications. This was the first year that I truly felt like a member of the staff rather than a contributor, and I worry about how others view my position and how work will be allocated to me without a page. Regardless, I have nothing but confidence for the strides that the Rubicon will take during my senior year, if our amazing May issue is anything to go by.
Fall 2024 Reflection
While this year has been wildly challenging for me in nearly every other subject, I’ve been so glad I can fall back on Rubicon. I truly feel as though we’ve built a positive staff culture and coming to class every day feels like meeting up with friends and creating something great together rather than a job I’m required to complete.
This year, I’ve taken a backseat from mainly creating illustrations (somewhere around 23 last year…) to focusing on improving my writing and design skills. I have taken greater efforts to start my drafts and get my interviews in earlier, which in turn allows me more time to write a stronger piece with each draft. I was initially afraid of writing the editorial this month, but I’m glad I took on the opportunity as I feel like writing a piece meant to tell our staff’s message and discussing with editors has already made me improve, and I’m excited for the editorial read.
In terms of design, as a solo editor with only one page, I’ve had to get creative with the ways that I showcase images and text every month. I want every page to be distinct and appealing, not just in content, but also visually. Since the start of the year, I’ve been determined to define what Mixed Media as a section is, whether that be through what themes we cover or the ways readers can engage with the back cover.
For the future of the section, I want to not only continue having a unique visual identity for each page, but to come up with new multimedia elements to allow readers to engage on more than one platform. I’ve also found that the quizzes, infographics, and the turkey photo gallery were very fun to make and well received, and I want to use the unique versatility of the Mixed Media section to showcase different parts of our community in brand new ways each month. Additionally, I hope to cover more physically interactive events like the art show again in the future too.
I also would like to reflect on and greatly appreciate the work that we have done as a staff to take our paper and the stories we tell about our community to the next level. While topics such as the phone policy have drawn conversation from different groups of students disagreeing, I’m glad that we were able to report on them to spread awareness to people who may not have discussed them without the editorials calling attention to the way the policy was carried out. In addition, despite it being very hard to find interviews due to the lack of student body knowledge, doing the research and finding the interviews means that students now have a way to find out. This sentiment toward the work our staff puts in extends to the online staff as well– I’ve noticed the unique ways that our print pieces are formatted when they go up online!
As it is with every reflection, I am so grateful for being able to create as part of this staff, and I look forward to what we come up with next. For my spring reflection, I hope to see visible progress from where I’ve started. I want to make a comic-based editorial cartoon, use more cutouts, and film a video. There’s always room to improve!
Spring 2024 Reflection
This past semester has been a whirlwind of new changes in my Rubicon experience through the multiple role changes I had from illustrator to A&E editor to the brand new special section editor. I’m really lucky to have received such a position and have the opportunity to be able to learn so many things, from going out to take photos in the process of putting together the Ibid Yearbook alongside my staff to learning InDesign for the first time to finally getting an Adobe account after an entire year!
Using InDesign to actually take part in the page design process has been very fun, if not for some minor pitfalls with the style of our publication I previously did not need to know. As I have had a lot of experience with Adobe software like Photoshop and Premiere, while the basic interface of the program was not as difficult as I had expected it to be due to its similarity with Photoshop, many text formatting tools and things like the design library were a bit hard to find, but I think I caught on very quickly with the help of the rest of the staff, who were always supportive and instructional when I was constantly asking questions and having to use other people’s accounts to access Adobe.
While designing pages was a brand new opportunity for me in the Rubicon, I believe I’ve also made many improvements in my writing and artistic abilities, as I am still writing stories and creating illustrations for our publication. Putting together the image carousel for my illustration section of my portfolio (I had way too many illustrations to scroll through before) has made me realize how many pieces I’ve created for the Rubicon. In addition, I’ve been working on earlier first drafts, interviews, and deadlines, which have been helping a lot with the additional workload with page design this semester, though I had an underwhelming ending with copy after putting off my drafts due to AP testing this month.
Of course, this isn’t to say that the world of academics and journalism hasn’t changed at all either. New advancements in generative AI are happening at a pace more rapid than copyright or humans can even keep up with. I’m really glad that the Rubicon will be crafting a policy around AI use as it is a subject I’m very passionate about and want the technology to be used correctly. I think designating proper and improper ways of using AI, previous examples of AI usage, clarification, and encouraging people to keep up to date with the technology are all helpful. Moving forward with technological advancements is always going to have its pros and cons; as an artist, I’ve seen a lot of talk about AI and art online. Hopefully a clear AI policy will help our publication continue to take its next steps forward with confidence.
As always, I’m super excited for what’s to come next year! I hope my future self had a great time at the Rubicon banquet.
Fall 2023 Reflection
Despite the Rubicon feeling like a years-old part of my high school career, this is only technically my second year of high school and my first year officially on staff. Between the two semester of Writing for Publication and the gap year in Korea where I still sent illustrations and editorial cartoons (the illustration section of my portfolio took far too long of an amount of time to complete), this past semester I've spent creating multiple illustrations and graphics every issue, and even the Boston trip, journalism has become such an integral part of my life.
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Of course, I can't fully reflect about anything in this semester without mentioning the strange year-long break I took from school due to my dad's job in Korea. I moved there in June of 2022 and returned a few weeks before school started this year in August. During my time there, I volunteered at a local English newspaper, as well as helping my mom edit her own pieces. My most memorable piece would have to be when I was feeling slightly annoyed by the fact they kept telling my my writing was too short and proceeded to write a 900 word article about Christmas trees. Writing kept me up to date on national and global news, a thing that was harder to find in the past as a person who often got their news from friends or social media.
In addition to the local newspaper, I also created several illustrations for the Rubicon prints throughout the academic year, something I can do more fully as the illustrator this year. The remote exchange of artwork differs to the illustration creation process in person, as I can't just walk over to the editor and show them sketches or ask them how I could change things to better fit the pages. I love how scrolling through the illustrations I've made over the years can show my artistic progress I've made.
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A highlight of this semester was the trip to Boston, where I was able to interact with other journalism students, participate in contests, and learn from professionals about so many different topics. I was able to bring this knowledge, especially in feature writing to the rest of my class through a presentation, and could exchange ideas with the other people who attended the convention as well. The crowd of people waiting for the doors to open in the session that talked about Taylor Swift's writing and the amount of them that were asked to leave as there was no space is something that'll be hard to forget.
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Becoming a part of the Rubicon staff this year has brought many new changes to the process of creating but also a more exciting journalism experience within this semester. While deadlines were a bit of a challenge and finding interviews are as hard as they always are, I've learned so many invaluable skills from my time in and out of the publications room and I'm more than excited to see what I do next.
Spring 2022 Reflection
Funnily enough, I had no idea that I'd signed myself up for two semesters of Writing for publication until I received my new schedule. I knew from the start there wasn't any turning back, though. This new semester was one of the most exciting experiences I've had in producing digital and printed media and I'm more than grateful this happened. While I had less of a hand in writing and was more hands-on in my working style for this semester, the previous values that were held up during my last semester were more than helpful in reminding me where the direction this new piece should be going. With new students, projects, and more room to be creative, this semester was a blast.
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While the first semester delved a bit deeper into laws about the press and the history of journalism, this class was more about digital design and publication on our own. Probably the most memorable for me was the production of my articles of opinion and arts and entertainment. It was so much fun to write about things I was interested in and share them with the other students at SPA. I also created digital illustrations for print and online monthly, most notably during the May 2022 issue where I took on the role of the Rubicon's illustrator and created multiple graphics.
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I believe that I had the most success in writing when I was able to do a separate day of research. It took a while for me to understand how this worked, as writing on the Rubicon is very different from other academic processes, and is much more flexible as long as good communication is made with the editors and writers. Even if it was not a research-based topic, having a better idea of what I'm writing about was very helpful when I was able to read about other writing and see media related to the subject. I mostly kept my writing the same after my first draft and made minor edits and changes from there.
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Much of my creative ideology comes from my interest in digital illustration. I start with a very rough base, which encompasses the research or the bullet points I leave for myself, then start on the structuring. As soon as the main portion builds up, I like to let the situation take control of what happens. Often times when a drawing isn't turning out as I want it to, I have certain tools as last-minute fixes I can try. However, just like in journalism, sometimes, there isn't an easy fix, as every piece is unique. This was especially relevant this semester because of how starkly different each project we were working on was. Creating the podcasts required editing knowledge that I needed to learn, the opinions and art pieces required longer pieces and hand-made graphics, the sports features needed cooperation with other people, and taking part in designing the print issue of the Rubicon was a massive team effort.
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Each month I've spent in the publications room regardless of whom I was with, which semester I was learning in, or what I was doing, feels like a brand new experience to me, and coming into the classroom after finishing our last project got me so excited to see what we were doing next. I'm going to be out of the country next school year, but I am looking forward to reading about what my fellow publication producers and SPA are up to.
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Fall 2021 Reflection
It's pretty crazy to see myself on the bios section of the Rubicon's website, not to mention the fact that there are articles under my name. It's always been a dream of mine to see my ideas be shared with other people. When I was younger, I desperately wanted to become a writer for this very reason. Ideas are very powerful, and I'm so grateful to have contributed in educating the student body through a well-designed newspaper run by people in SPA as well. While I've never considered myself much of a writer outside of school, it's so important to share other people's stories, and I will never forget that.
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It really surprised me how in-depth we went into journalism during the first few weeks of class, talking about the very interesting history of journalism itself as well as press ethics, laws, and different cases relating to the first amendment. This class has forever changed my viewpoint on journalism. I learned so much about the importance of sharing information that was correct and as unbiased as could be, and I hope in the future I will read more news articles as I did in class. It was fun to hear about everyone else’s current events.
A challenge that stemmed from my inexperience in writing anything beyond a school essay or a creative story piece was really learning the AP style format and the way of writing the news. I’m now inclined to believe that writing journalism is a combination of giving information and telling people’s stories. It’s hard to believe in a world of facts and fiction that journalism is the epitome of writing about people, but I think that including and connecting the pieces we publish to the students who read them will leave our messages in their minds.
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The biggest impact left on my experience in Writing For Publication wasn’t the writing part, it was the values we were writing about. An activity I so distinctly remember was where we were supposed to name what “life” was on a blackboard. It’s not just a single word. It’s different for everyone and spans wider than anything you’ve ever seen. I want to share what I believe needs to be heard with as many people as possible. And I can’t think of a better way to do so than to continue my journey in writing for publication.