about
me
personal statement
about
ehs journalism
When I’m writing a big story and there’s too much in front of me – too many quotes in my transcripts, too many angles I want to flesh out or too many ideas I’m impatient to talk to my staff about – I grab a highlighter. I flip through the pages of the transcript and pick the best quotes to turn bright yellow. I make a list of angles or ideas and wash the important ones in neon. I make the picture smaller, clearer.
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Wrapping up everything journalism means to me in one essay seems impossible. I’m boiling over with my huge passions in the subject: designing and leading and writing longform stories. I’m filled to the brim with thousands of little journalistic loves: daily laughs with the staff and the way dates are formatted in AP Style. On this topic, more than any other, the “too much” is, well, too much.
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So, in outlining this essay, I considered what it would look like if the last three years were just another transcript – if I took a highlighter to my pages and pages of memories from my time telling the stories of Edwardsville High School.
I’d make the first stroke across the first truly meaningful story I ever wrote. I was in Journalism 1 as a sophomore, still a year away from being eligible for the publishing staff. We had been assigned a profile, and my subject was sitting in front of me in the library.
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The young woman I chose to profile was different from anyone I’d interviewed before, hurled into a tragedy beyond her years. When her father died, she’d grieved, but she’d also exhaled – free from his sporadic exits and re-entrances in her life, free from watching cancer drain him. As the interview started, I could almost see quotes of pain and relief knotting in the air above us. Could I ever untangle them? Her internal conflict spilled from her mouth onto the table – a sticky, nauseating weight. It was too much.
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I lingered at the table when the conversation was over and eyed the “delete” button on my phone next to my recording. It would’ve been easy to kill the story then, or at any point throughout the next few weeks as I sat at my computer for hours every night – teasing, folding and grabbing at the phrases of the article swirling in the air around my desk, rearranging them tirelessly with frustrated tears tracing my cheeks.
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How do I know when a story is done? How do I know when a story is true? Usually, there comes a point when I feel the same way reading it as I did when it first fell on me, and only then can I lift my fingers from the keyboard. I knew the last draft of that story was true when it finally echoed the conflict I felt when I first heard it. I’d placed the quotes, aligned the transitions, summoned the words, and labored over the punctuation to ensure the story – the whole, living story, pulsing with nuance and glimmering with complexity – glowed on the page.
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To understand my scholastic journalism career in the context of the journalism education opportunities available to me, I think a brief summary of EHS's journalism program is appropriate.
My advisor is Amanda Thrun. She teaches both journalism classes at EHS and oversees production of both publications -- The Claw magazine and the Tiger Times Online news site -- as well as the yearbook staff, which is separate from the journalism program.
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Journalism 1 (J1) is the prerequisite to join Advanced/Honors Journalistic Composition (AJC). Students become eligible for J1 as sophomores and for AJC as juniors -- which are the grades in which I joined each.
J1 students do not publish their work. Rather, they learn basics of AP Style, interviewing and ethics, and they practice writing stories, headlines, captions, etc. When a student joins AJC, they become part of the publishing staff on top of more advanced classwork and exploration in the craft of journalism. AJC is co-curricular, meaning it requires intense work for the publications outside of class as well as a full academic load of coursework.
AJC students write a story for the news site every week, reporting to class with a draft every Wednesday and a final piece every Friday.​ The staff takes quarterly breaks from the news site to write and design for The Claw. Pieces produced for The Claw are new and separate from work published on the Tiger Times Online.
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The publications staff at EHS is characterized by extremely limited size. Last year, AJC had 10 members. This year, it has 11. Our chain of command consists of an editor-in-chief, web editor, student life (features) editor, sports editor, arts and entertainment (culture) editor and opinion editor. The editor-in-chief also serves as the news editor.
Bio
Sami McKenney is a senior and the editor-in-chief of The Claw and The Tiger Times Online. She is the president of the Art Club and National Art Honor Society, an officer of National English Honor Society, vice team captain of the Ethics Bowl team and a member of the Creative Writing Club, National French Honor Society and National Honor Society. After school and on weekends, Sami can be found in class at Turning Pointe Academy of Dance or in rehearsals for Turning Pointe’s pre-professional company, Tour Dance. Additionally, she is an avid reader, cat lover and Taylor Swift enthusiast. She hopes to pursue a career as a journalist and will join Northwestern University's class of 2029 this fall as a journalism and political science double major. Go Cats!
I’ve always loved writing. But I fell in love with journalism specifically because of the fulfillment that comes from letting a tough story fall on me, then writing my way toward the truth at its center. Sitting in front of that young woman was the first time I felt overwhelmed by the sheer responsibility I’ve come to know as reporting. Since then, I’ve treated that feeling as a gift.
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I’ve reported on the Black Student Union attempting to find community in my predominantly white school, told the stories of Jewish and Muslim students fearful of hate following the outbreak of war in Israel and Gaza, and profiled the transgender student fighting for gender-neutral bathrooms in front of the school board. Each of these stories has involved handling my peers’ most sensitive hopes and fears, gently pressing into pivotal moments in their lives and letting the “too much” overwhelm me in the way I now know is crucial.
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When EHS’s main gym floor started buckling in a way that would affect almost every sport and performing arts organization at the school, I interviewed athletes, coaches, administrators, conductors, instrumentalists, singers – everyone impacted by the damage. I waded through school board documents and long conversations in which I knew my administrative subject would only let half of what they told me remain on the record. The story was always going to be too much – that was the point. I had to trust myself to exist in the middle of all of it.
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I learned to let myself be too much as well. I learned to write op-eds with conviction on everything from politics to anti-bullying speeches about elephants (yeah, that happened). I learned to follow my instincts about out-of-the-box approaches to stories. When I became editor-in-chief, I learned to let myself use color and creativity in my design conventions for The Claw, even though it looked very different from past editors’ decisions.
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The dynamics of being part of a staff are often just as complicated as a large story. I’ve spent late nights writing last-minute pieces when a fellow staff member failed to meet a deadline and worked for hours on spreads when others ignored them. Journalism is a high-stress craft, and, as a leader, I’ve had to learn to navigate the “too much” of the writers and designers around me, whether that’s through holding constructive conversations about our communication issues or stepping in when others falter.
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If my journalism experience were a transcript, the past two years would be filled with bright yellow – more than I could ever capture in one personal statement. My standout, neon moments are those in which I led proudly, laughed loudly or wrote boldly despite being surrounded by a whole lot of “too much.”
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For me, being a journalist means existing and working in a constant overflow. I put snapshots of people’s lives into words, but like the young woman sitting across from me in the library two years ago, no person will ever fit neatly into an article. Short paragraphs, punchy quotes, neatly attributed information – it’s the time-tested approach to reporting, but it’s a structure under which some things inevitably get discarded.
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Each time I sit down to write a story, I know I might let something important get lost in the overflow – and I hate that. But looking back, I think being anxious to miss any crucial aspect of the narrative is the trait I’m proudest to carry with me every time I go out into my community and call myself a journalist.