Gemma Stoll

  Character

Resourcefulness.  Resourcefulness is all about using the materials you acquire and using them in an ingenious way.  At the Foothill Dragon Press you are allowed the use of a camera and you have a pencil and paper and people to interview, but you have to resourceful and figure out which people would be the best to interview, what questions will get the information out in the open, and using your brain to manipulate the information into something accurate and interesting.

This character trait is very important in Journalism because you have to constantly update your opinions and schemas and think outside the box in every way possible.

Anyone can write, but can they write thoughtfully, clearly, and humorously?  Use your tools wisely, and avoid functional fixedness.

I am forced to be resourceful in every single article that I write, no exceptions.  A conventional story is a boring one.

Rights and Responsibilities

The First Amendment gives Americans the right to freedom of speech, religion, press, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  Journalists are required to tell the truth and inform the public. 

Community

In addition to the Foothill Dragon Press, I play club volleyball for

California Heat in Camarillo and am actively involved in community service at the

Ventura Boys and Girls Club and Friends of the Library.

Goals

Next semester I would like to improve my journalistic writing, initiative, and photography.  I find it hard to work the cameras, despite help from my fellow classmates.  As for writing, I really liked my articles "Brittany Bernardi 'is good at everything'" and "Speech team gets silly with holiday spirit", and I hope to make all my other articles as spectacular as these next semester.  And I want to get completely comfortable with interviews and follow-ups with people for the press. 

My Highlight:

My single best moment in Journalism would have to be listening to Aron Egelko tell us a story at the MerryFest.  As described briefly in my "Speech team gets silly with holiday spirit" article, he invited the audience to come sit in a circle around the stage for storytime.  It made me so glad that I came to the event, and that I had the honor of telling the school about how awesome the whole event was.  Aron read Llama, Llama, Holiday Drama; a heartwarming story about a little llama's Christmas.  It made me feel like a little kid again.  And to top it all off, I got 5 points extra credit in my English class for attending - a wonderful suprise, in addition to a nomination for best writing for the month of December.

Best Work:

Speech team gets silly with holiday spirit

This article was nominated for the "best writing" press award in December.  It is one of my longer articles (in length) and it took longer to write as well, because there was so much content to fit it.  I didn't feel as intimidated interviewing people at the MerryFest because they were all so welcoming and helpful.  I captured the spirit of the event in this article. 

Brittany Bernardi “is good at everything”

Besides being one of the most difficult articles I've written, I think it is one of my best because it really describes Brittany in depth and captures her personality.  This article generated the most comments of all my stories, and I got many different sources.  I also really enjoyed interviewing Brittany and getting to know her.  She's hilarious and an amazing and talented person. 

Foothill flies by 899 in state tests

This was my first article written for the Foothill Dragon Press.  I worked on it jointly with Sobeida Curiel.  It was really hard to write this first article, and I felt really proud when it was finished and publilshed.  For my first article, I think it was pretty good.