Feature
After Effects: The costs of going back in-person
It was 9:47 PM and I was on a phone call with our old EIC, Vish Gondesi. We didn't have a dominant story. I suddenly remembered I was in the cafeteria. There was not a substitute teacher for my AP English class, so we were sent to the cafeteria. I noticed a plenitude of students there and many students were walking in late just because the buses were. Then it clicked. These were the after-effects. I conducted several interviews within a 48-hour period -- with the help of our News Editor (21-22) Lydia Hargett who interviewed Natalie Muenz about contracting COVID-19 -- and wrote the dominant story.
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- MIPA Honorable Mention for In-depth feature
(It was very surprising to learn that a Washington Post reporter read my article and said it was very well written)
Please make sure to swipe right to see/read the second half of the story
Kira Zhao: Reflections of being Chinese
The microaggressions Asian Americans were dealing with were heightened due to the pandemic. My peer, Kira Zhao, had expressed these microaggressions quite a lot because she lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She noticed people would walk away from her and give her weird looks, outside of Ann Arbor. Writing this article, I learned during the interview process, just how important it was to treat every interview as a conversation, not an interrogation. That way, I can capture any interviewee's personality and thoughts. That humanistic perspective to grasp is something that I mastered over the course of writing stories.
- 2nd place for MIPA's diversity coverage