By Claire Keenan & Sophie O’Reilly –
As June approaches, the Grade 12s around the city are getting ready to complete their final year of high school. Unfortunately, for us, that means our writing for the Kitchissippi Times and our time as co-editors of Knightwatch, Nepean’s online newspaper, will come to an end. Next year, the Knightwatch editor position will be taken up by Bella Crysler.
Throughout the year we have both written articles, taken photos, and conducted interviews to share with KT readers. So, we’d like to team up for our last article and discuss what we have learned, our favourite parts of the position, and our plans for the future!
Sophie O’Reilly
Next year, I will be studying at McGill University in Montreal, which is a city that I have always loved. I am very excited for that opportunity. To continue on with writing I will be working part-time at Ottawa Life Magazine this summer as part of the Social Media Team as a continuation of the co-operative education program in which I took part this year.
My favorite part of writing for the Kitchissippi Times was learning about different events at my school such as Inside Ride, the student exchange to British Columbia, and getting firsthand information directly from the people involved and organizers. I also liked learning about different topics pertaining to high school life, experiences, and opinions that are unique to high school students such as part-time jobs and volunteering. It was really interesting to hear opinions and stories from so many different people, and from that I learned a lot and got more insight about the Nepean High School community.
Claire Keenan
I am continuing my studies in writing by going to Concordia University for Creative Writing. I’ll be going to school in the fall, and am super excited to move out and explore a new city! My favourite part of writing for the Kitchissippi Times has got to be my article about the Nepean Improv Team. A lot of my friends are on the team and so interviewing them was fun, and it’s a topic that I think more people should know about, and so I enjoyed writing about it. I loved picking and choosing what quotes I should use from the interviews, and even though I won’t be conducting many interviews in my future it gave me lots of practise.
I learned a lot about time management and planning when exactly I dedicate time to write. Unfortunately, there’s no formula on how to write an article, and so at times when I sat down to write, nothing came to me. Mentioning the who, what, where, and when is something that has been taught to me over and over again, but doing so helps to start the article off and gives myself, and the reader, a general sense of how the article is going to go. Also, planning when I would interview people and take photos was another thing I learned. Making sure you have lots of photo options is important as the editor may want to include more than one.
Overall we both had a really wonderful time expanding our portfolios and getting involved with the community. We had a great time together and both learned lots about our individual writing styles.
Claire Keenan and Sophie O’Reilly are grade 12 students at Nepean High School.