The day has finally come, and I can’t believe that I’m writing my last article for Explosion. These two years have gone by quickly, and it has been really fun. 

My interest in Journalism started when my friend, Hailey Shannon, first introduced me to the class. She wrote for the Explosion website during her sophomore year, and she was telling me that staff members could basically write anything they wanted.

So when I was organizing my schedule for junior year, I decided to put Journalism as one of my electives. At first, I was overwhelmed when Mr. Livingston told us that we had to write eight articles over the course of the school year, but when I wrote my first article, a review of Seventeen’s album,  17 Is Right Here, I realized that this class would be fun and easy to manage. 

While I was looking at the “Reviews” section of the Explosion website, I saw that only a few people wrote about K-pop or K-dramas, so that pushed me into writing about them. It felt like there wasn’t enough representation of the two things I really love, so it was like my job to put those types of articles out there. 

Writing reviews has always been my favorite, because I can write about the K-pop albums and K-dramas that really matter to me. I love talking about the context of each series or song, and I’ve had fun researching them, too. 

My two favorite articles are “From Debut to Global Domination” and “My BINIverse Concert Experience”.These articles were a mix of a review and an opinion piece, and it was fun mashing both genres into one article. Although it was kind of hard, because I hadn’t written an opinion piece before, once I got the hang of it, the BTS article came together nicely. 

I really enjoy doing “feedback forms” for the articles posted every school day, because they help me and my peers figure out how we can improve in our writing. By doing them, it feels like our writing matters and our voices are heard.

Being the Reviews Editor has been such a fun experience for me, and I enjoyed working behind the scenes and helping Mr. Livingston upload the articles on the website. Having this type of role has also helped me improve my overall writing, which will surely help me in the future as well.

As I said, these two years have gone by so fast, and it has been a rollercoaster ride. Sadly, I won’t be pursuing Journalism in college, but writing for Explosion will always be special to me.

To Mr. Livingston, it’s been such an honor to be a part of this class, and I will forever be thankful for this opportunity. It was nice helping you behind the scenes, and it is going to be one of the things I will miss once I graduate. Lastly, thank you for being such a huge help for these past two years, and I will miss this class so much.