Hello everyone! My name is Amanda Michaels, but I go by Mandie. I live in Milton, Georgia, and attend Milton High School. I will be a senior in the fall, with an interest in journalism and media production. I have always loved to creatively write, whether it be fiction stories, school papers, or just what I am feeling in the moment, and feel that I can write better than I can speak. I do not have a lot of experience in journalism, but what sparked my interest was a class I took in my junior year called AP Seminar. In AP Seminar, we had numerous projects and papers on different topics of interests, which allowed me to choose whatever I wanted to write about and dive deeper into unknown subjects. Although it was very stressful, it ended up being my favorite class.

I have played tennis since I was 7, starting in Long Island, New York. However, Long Island was not huge on tennis, and I rarely played until I moved to Milton in 2015. From there, my neighborhood had tennis lessons from Wes Adams, who is still my coach to this day. I have played numerous leagues including ALTA, USTA and T2, and played on my high school JV team my freshman and sophomore year. I still play club tennis, and volunteer to teach at my mom’s tennis academy for older women. Tennis has always been a huge part of my family life, and I hope to attend a college where I can play club tennis and continue it further.

Whenever I have free time, I usually will be with my friends, either playing video games, shopping, or getting food. I have two cats, Bruce and Cookie, whom I have had since I lived in New York. I also have a sister, Megan, who is 14 and entering high school this year. She is one of my best friends, and we always do everything together. My mom and dad are the people who inspire me the most, and are also some of my best friends. That might sound lame, but my family really is great. Whenever I am busy, it is usually because of my job. I work as a hostess and a busser at Campania, a small Italian restaurant. My favorite thing about working there is the people, who I probably talk to more than I actually work.

UGA has always been one of my top picks for college ever since I moved to Georgia. But, even if I do not get in, I know everything happens for a reason and there is a college out there for me!

Hey everybody, my name is Charles Alexander Cook, but I just go by Alex. I have lived in Stockbridge, Georgia, which is in Henry County. However, I was born in Clayton County, where my mother lived the majority of her life. I have lived in the same house in Stockbridge for my entire life and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. The house has four people living in it, my mom, dad, younger brother and myself. When I was in fourth grade, I switched from my 40-person school and started at Eagles Landing Christian Academy, or ELCA. This August, I will start my senior year at ELCA and I’m so excited for it.

While I have never had the opportunity to take a newspaper or journalism class, I have taken five different AP classes dealing with writing, history and research. Some classes include :AP Lang, AP Seminar, and AP United States History. I absolutely love writing and the creativity aspect of it. The rants or opinions that you can easily input through your words is one of the coolest things about writing to me. I think my personality is very easily shown through my writing and I think that is why journalism interests me. I can talk about anything through my personal lens and paint a picture that is beautiful and enjoyable to myself and other readers.

Something interesting about me is that I am a manager/assistant coach for three sports and four different sports teams. At my school, I help manage the football and baseball team and I act as an assistant coach for the varsity/j.v. basketball teams. I also act as an assistant coach for the Georgia Jayhawks, an independent AAU team out of Jonesboro, Georgia.

I absolutely love movies and will talk about any movie, any genre with anyone. Movies are another part of writing that interests me as the scripts go beyond just words and can make or break a movie and its quality. However, through all of my interests and passions, my favorite thing I do will always be related to basketball. Since the moment when I watched my first NBA game to the day I shot a basketball, I have been completely in love with the game.

Thanks so much for listening to a little bit about me!

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.

My name is Sarah Buck. My actual name is Susan LaFon Buck but I really hated the name Susan. Susan is my grandmother’s name but Sarah is my other’s grandma’s name and what my parents almost named me. It’s confusing but my grandma’s names are: Sarah LaFon Lawrence and Susan Gail Buck so I’m named after a mix of both of them.

I was born in Newnan, Georgia on Oct. 30, 2009. I am an only child, but I have always had pets. We have three Jack Russels because they are my parents favorite breed and a rescue cat because we felt bad for him. I moved to Alpharetta in 2016 and I’ve lived there since then. I currently attend The Premo School. I’ve been going there for two years and I am now going into eighth grade.

I don’t really have any experience in journalism because my school is really small and we can’t start a program. When I was 7-10, I made multiple newspapers with my friends but they were not fact-checked, edited or good at all — so I wouldn’t count that as “journalism.”

We do do a lot of projects at school though and I did learn a lot about writing articles, bias and what to include when writing during our DACA unit. I have also written some about the news in Spanish for assignments. I have always liked writing, and I really enjoy creative writing and researching topics. I also have a big interest in true crime and I think it would be interesting to cover it, like in “Serial,” which is what sparked my interest in journalism. It’s one of my favorite podcasts and I feel like she does such a good job with not being biased. Because of the podcast I have always liked writing and I really wanted to try it out. Also, because of her podcast Adnan Syed was freed and I really hope I can make an impact like that.

Some interesting things about me are that I have been learning Spanish since I was 8 (with a tutor) and I am half fluent. I play bass and I write stories in my free time. I also listen to a lot of true crime podcasts.

I’m Gracin Harlow Stein, named after famous actresses Grace Kelly and Jean Harlow. I was born April 12th, 2010 and am entering eighth grade at The Premo School. I live in Marietta, Georgia, which is right outside of Atlanta. However, I was born in California, then I moved to Georgia, then Maryland, then California, then I moved back to Georgia. I have two brothers: Campbell, who goes by Cam, and Ryland. Cam is 8 years old and lives at home. Ryland is 15 years old and attends a boarding school in Utah.

I’m attending this journalism camp for two main reasons: I want to be a journalist and I like to write. My dream is to be a global travel journalist. Although I’ve never had any experience in journalism, I enjoy creative writing, specifically stories about crime. My favorite types of journalism are news and opinion pieces. I love writing opinion pieces because I can express my opinions without people telling me I’m too opinionated, which is something a teacher has said to me.

I wouldn’t say I’m any more interesting than the next person, but I still have unique aspects of my personality and life. I never read the news, but I read romance and fantasy books. Currently, I’m reading the fourth book in the ‘Lockwood & Co.’ series by Jonathon Stroud. I enjoy analyzing books and shows, looking at questions of why a character did something or why they didn’t.

Greetings everyone! My name is Keshondra Shipp. You all can call me Kee or Ms. Kee. I’m from the small town of Sylvester, Georgia. I just received my master’s degree in journalism and mass communication last month from the University of Georgia with a concentration in health and medical journalism and a certificate in African American Studies. I received my bachelor’s degree in English from Georgia Southwestern State University back in 2020. Go pandemic class!

Since attending UGA, I have been a research and teaching assistant in Grady’s Entertainment and Media Studies department and also worked as a reporter for The Red & Black, focusing on topics of breaking news and health and sciences. I am a proud member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the Association of Health Care Journalists.

Over the span of my journalism career and time at UGA I have had many opportunities and experiences. I’ve had the chance to interview Raphael Warnock during last year’s election season, go on a study abroad trip to Cuba, attend some journalism conferences on UGA’s dime and take advantage of so many other experiences.