a vetted explanation of what reporters find after exploring human minds and actions. Humans are storytelling creatures who instinctively want to know why people do and believe what they do. These drivers, their core beliefs, can lie so deep in the subconscious brain that people rarely understand those beliefs are the real drivers of their own behavior.

However, through my time in journalism, I found my journalistic core belief: I want people to understand other people.

Reporting requires consistent effort.

This could be writing the “filler” stories, contacting groups and keeping updated on events. Through the boring tasks of schedule requests, email updates and knocking on doors, reporters strike gold. Those little moments turn into big gets.

We knew Christopher Hargraves was approaching the 50-meter freestyle school record but didn't know who actually held the record. During the reporting process, I asked the swim coach to see who held it, and — in a surprise to both myself and Hargraves — we saw his uncle's name, Bubba Pruett, who did so 20 years earlier. 

Not only did it turn into a solid sports feature, but I also followed up once he broke it.

Recognition: Best of SNO; 2025 ILPC First place online IAA sports-news; 2025 TAJE Superior, online BITS & Superior, yearbook BITS & 3rd runner-up yearbook copy, Best of the Best

The hardest stories are the most important to tell. This were the hardest articles I've ever written. 

It's a five part series following my perspective on my Mom's death — but it is not necessarily about her death. It's a five-part series about mental health, drug use and addiction — and how these things  impact the family unit, my family in particular. It's also the first time I ever confronted my past.

Speaking about Mom raised memories I blocked out – bad ones. I kept writing anyway. I see the series as a characterization of the trauma me and thousands of families experienced with their loved ones. 

I felt like vomiting out of fear before publishing. But I clicked that button anyways. Mom brought a face to cold statistics of the opioid epidemic. 

Recognition: Best of SNO (5)

News articles serve their purpose as packages of information, but straight facts make up half of a story. The other half is feeling.

In December 2024, a tornado blew through my hometown of Conroe, Texas. While the tornado flurried through, I wrote a news article and my winter break went on.

But while my life went on, that tornado halted the lives of dozens others. That's exactly what my initial article failed to capture.

By chance, a friend had lost his home to that storm. I interviewed his family – my only issue being they only spoke Spanish, and I only spoke English. Their son translated our conversation and I was able spotlight a tear-jerking story of an immigrant family who had  built their home from the ground up and had to restart.

That home became more than a statistic in a brief tornado.

Recognition: Best of SNO; 2025 TAJE Excellent, online BITS & Superior, yearbook BITS

In the fast-paced news world, reporters can lose their humanity under a drive for facts and need to hit deadlines. 

But behind every obituary, there's a family experiencing the worst grief possible. 

When Spanish teacher Rene Hinojosa unexpectedly died, I wanted readers to understand that grief and to help them grieve themselves. Readers had no clue what happened and were hungry to know. I interviewed his son, Rene Hinojosa Jr., that week. Interviewing a freshly mourning son is a balancing act between gathering facts and remaining human. Spending an hour of chipping away at the beloved teacher's life proved how hard this balancing act is. 

Interviews like these remind me, as a journalist, I am human, so are my sources, and so are my readers. Neither timeliness nor massive interest in news should strip any of them of humanity.

Recognition: Best of SNO; 2025 ILPC First place online IAA news-feature; 2025 TAJE Superior, online BITS & Excellent, yearbook BITS

Our yearbook needed a story for the science spread, so I interviewed science-loving senior Nathaly Arana. However, the interview turned out to be shallow, so I trashed the entire draft. She gave the typical generic "I just love science" answers. One lesson from this is to not settle for the story you have; get more information and do it right, so I called Arana and scheduled a follow up interview.

I knew there had to be something more to her story. In her original interview, she briefly mentioned how she felt like she would fail her parents. That was it.

During the follow-up, I discovered she felt indebted to her immigrant parents and pressured, internally, to impress them. This was not a story about science. It was a story FROM science — one about a girl's dedication and appreciation for her parents. 

Recognition: Best of SNO; 2025 TAJE Superior, yearbook BITS

Reporting is a lifestyle. Powerful stories are hidden in plain sight, it's a journalist's job to find them.

I found this story sitting in my Algebra 2 class, when I overheard sophomore cross country runner Eduardo Arcile mention he snuck onto the team behind his parents' back. I followed my gut and scheduled an interview. 

There are moments in interviews where a reporter knows they found the story. Arcile's interview had multiple. Arcile's running success was average, but his stories were extraordinary. 

All I had to write the story was a free i-pad I found in an old storage unit, so for the next three days that what I stuffed my face into writing. Stories like Arcile's are all around, hiding in plain sight. Reporting is a lifestyle.

Recognition: Best of SNO; 2025 ILPC First place online IAA sports-feature; 2025 TAJE Superior, online BITS & Superior, yearbook BITS

I didn't know a lick of basketball going into this interview, but I did know the golden rule of journalism: always ask why.

While I was ignorant, for senior Kyra Rosencran, basketball was all she ever knew. I probably asked "What's that mean?" at least 10 times in that interview. But what resulted was a in-depth story on Rosencran's core belief around athletics.

Through every confusing play and plot twist in her life I asked a good, blunt "why?" and unburied her real story of overcoming mental and physical trauma through sports. 

Reporting is built on asking the obvious questions first.

Recognition: Best of SNO; 2025 ILPC Third place online IAA sports-feature; 2025 TAJE Superior, online BITS & Superior, yearbook bits & 2nd runner-up yearbook copy, Best of the Best.

Information and data are vital to reporting, but people are too. Collecting accurate, relevant and diverse perspectives is essential for complete coverage, not optional. Sometimes that means reaching out to sources in different states. Sometimes it’s the people right next to you.

I’ve contacted school board members nearly every month for email and phone interviews, active reporters from Community Impact and the Houston Chronicle, anonymously sourced immigrant families and family members of staff and students who died. 

Not only are sources vital, but they are sometimes hard to connect with. Journalists make it work. By far though, the strangest interview I held was inside of Roblox with a game developer from California. Yes, in-person interviews are the gold standard, but we also have to face the fact that, when push comes to shove, we have to make it work. 

Most stories feature secondary or even tertiary sources that journalists piece together and translate for the reader, but sometimes journalists produce the data themselves. I helped to coordinate an ambitious project among all the reporters to conduct a study of student burnout described in more detail below.

In 2024, my adviser and I started our most ambitious website project yet: an in-depth survey, analysis and report of student burnout after the reporters all agreed it was a pressing problem. We started drafting a quantitative survey to identify how bad the problem was and potential causes as best a survey can. I reached out and partnered with English teachers to distribute the anonymous survey in a way that would capture a representative and statistically significant sample size. 

Then, with the help of my adviser, I spent hours learning college-level statistics to interpret and understand the data presented and, also importantly, what it didn't. After the analysis with my adviser, we compiled a research report that led to developing story ideas.

I printed the report and handed it to the reporters to read over. Based on the most compelling data, we talked about what would be most helpful to the student body, and I assigned a variety of explainer, feature and opinion articles to present our findings. A large journalistic duty is effectively interpretation, especially numbers. 

This included noting the massive relationship between burnout and lack of sleep, the impact relationships with family held, and even the lack of relationships, honors courses, jobs, family and extracurriculars played.

This report was my building blocks of becoming a leader, being the first major project I led and proof that hard work can pay off.

Recognition: 2025 Top in Texas In-depth package, ILPC

We treat op-eds as a trial run for photographers interested in writing. This was the second written piece I published; it was really the first domino to fall. 

As a baseball dork, I felt passionate about the new pitch clock implemented in the Major Leagues that year, so I wrote about it. 

Hardly anyone read it, but getting my voice out there was enough to make me smile. Two years and dozens of articles later, I still smile when I reflect on this article. 

It may be a hard read, but it's a reminder that taking a first step can lead you places you'd never imagine. The fear many have about writing won't go away until you just start.

Recognition: 2025 ILPC Second place online IAA sports column; 2025 TAJE Excellent, online BITS

To see my process for copy editing other reporter's peices, visit the Leadership Page.