My experience with the 2019 writers fortnight experience was really interesting. We had the opportunity to listen to stories from special guests as well as people part of this school community. We had a journalist visit our classes to teach us about how to interview people. He gave us an example and interviewed our teacher, Mr. Sweeting. We learned about different ways to frame stories.

Then we had a chance to try this for ourselves during the human library. In the human library, we were given a chance to listen to stories and ask questions. We will later use the notes and stories to try and write a news article.

For the human library, I listened to two stories, The Nepali kid’s admissions horror story and the life of a criminal psychologist. I found them both really interesting. I think that when we have to choose which article to write I might focus on the Nepali kid’s story.

61 Nepali kids were given a scholarship to the UT Tyler. This for them was a miracle because it is difficult for foreign students to get admission into US universities in general, but without guidance from counselors, this already difficult process was even harder for them, but they did it and just as they were packing their bags they got a heartbreaking email. Too many scholarships were given out and some had to be retracted back. These kids had already declined their other offers like a seat in their own countries prestigious universities, now didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. They visited the United states Admissions office and Nepal to ask for help, they sent out an urgent message to help these students. Counselors and University admission from many other countries jumped in asked their contacts for help and got these students the full scholarships they once had.

When I first heard the story weeks before in assembly I didn’t really understand how big of a deal this was. When the story was told in more detail and with a more focused connection to the story I started to understand what these kids would have been going through. I feel like if I write this article well I will also be able to make people understand this event. I will probably write it as a feature article and focus more so on the students.

The other story that I heard was about the life of a criminal psychologist. I learned about how prisoners go through rehabilitation programs to not only test but to also help them get ready to be reintegrated into society. I also learned about how prisoners are a lot like us even if we don’t want to admit it, not all of them are psychopaths. We talked about some similar and different qualities between sexual abusers and violent criminals. I found this interview really interesting as well but I’m not too sure what I would focus on and how I could frame it.

To end our writers fortnight we met the author, Graham Rawles.  He talked to us about his unique writing style in which he uses newspaper and magazine cutouts to make stories. This was really interesting because when we tried it the story we originally wanted to tell changed depending on the words we found and it made those sentences more interesting and usually funnier.