Hi! I’m Burhann, I’m 16 years old, and I go to Buford High School (which is also the city I live in). I don’t have any journalism experience but I have been writing and a lover of reading since I was a little kid. I’ve been in the process of writing a coming-of-age novel for about three years, in which the plot of it has changed a total of five times and I’ve only started truly writing it for the past four months.
Journalism is not the major I plan to have in college, as I am more interested in literature and biochemistry. However, I’ve been in love with the news and media for years, and due to an early and ongoing obsession with Gilmore Girls (Rory specifically), I’ve always had an interest in journalism. Every now and then I’ll get the urge to write about the things around me and whenever I happen to come across a new interest, I express it through my writing. From think pieces about complacency in society and people in power to analyzing my favorite things in media, I’ve always inadvertently had a hand in journalism. Now, I want to become more confident in my own voice and the things that I have to say.
An interesting thing about myself is that I am a frequent lover of all things media, in which I go through phases of. Currently, I’ve been thrown back into my 10-year-long obsession with Spiderman, as Across the Spiderverse came out two weeks ago. I’m also interested in 2000’s – 2010 bands, and softer music in general (The Cardigans, 5sos, Lana Del Rey, Deftones, Leith Ross, and Faye Webster), and lastly a deep dive of anarchism/radicalism (which may have been a direct result of seeing Spider-Punk on my screen for the first time, but is not the only reasoning as to why I’ve taken interest).
Another interesting thing about me is that I love school and learning in general. I believe that by wasting educational resources, we’re doing a disservice to not just ourselves, but our curiosity and society as a whole. This school year, I fell in love with science, or more specifically, chemistry, and realized that I would also like to know more than two languages. Currently, I’m intermediate in French and am attempting to self-teach Spanish with the goal of being language certified in both by the time I graduate high school. I’m also on an all-AP ELA track in high school and plan on being dual enrolled the summer before senior year, with the goal of being able to skip my first year of college.
I believe that there is so much to be learned and with so little time on Earth, why waste the resources and materials handed to us? And while I could write of how the education system isn’t set up to support everyone and is at times set up for students to fail in terms of standardized testing and unavailable resources, this is about me, and I have thankfully always been in places where education and resources are always readily available to me. Due to growing up with immigrant parents who were nowhere near as fortunate as I am, I was always pushed to explore and take advantage of the resources given to me. So when a teacher pulled me aside, in March 2022, and told me that there was a creative writing camp she’d believe I would enjoy, I took advantage of that. Fast forward to today, June 19, 2023, I am here for the second year in a row, but this time to explore my own voice and what I am capable of.
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