Experiments in Journalism

From 2004 to 2006 I was a writer for The Tattoo, an online and (until recently) print newspaper for teen journalists. I only wrote three actual news pieces--the rest were reviews, opinion articles, and senior journals. Still, I did write some good stuff about cheating, gay tolerance, and drop out rates in high school. During my time with The Tattoo I shared first and second place awards from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists for my work on the Insider's Guide to High School and the 2005 Suburban Newspaper Association's award for Best Young People's Coverage. I have since retired from writing for The Tattoo and with it the prospect of doing anymore journalist work anytime in the near future. I do have a fair number of articles to my credit from my time there, however, and I've collected them here for anyone who's interested in reading them.

Beyond the high school experience: Advice you won't take, but should
August 24th, 2006 (Insider's Guide to High School)
The ironic thing about writing advice for incoming freshman is that they're at a point in their lives where they don't necessarily feel like they should listen to anyone else's advice--or at least they don't openly admit they want advice.

Catching a good book
July 11, 2006 (Book Review)
Tim Temples has just finished high school. He's young, popular, athletic, and has all the girls chasing after him. At the start of his summer vacation he's at the top of his game, but now he has college looming only a few months away. He's starting to have visions of his local fame vanishing into nothing once he leaves his hometown of Mattoon for the University of Illinois in Champaign. On top of that he must also contend with the older female co-worker, Helena, that he has started seeing, whom he must also face the possibility of leaving behind when he departs for college--unless, of course, he decides to not go to college at all.

It's kind of an uplifting book
April 2nd, 2006 (Book Review)
Teen depression is one of the biggest issues in adolescence. Cases of teen suicides have made headlines and self-esteem assemblies have become all the rage, but few books have dealt with teen depression as honestly and humorously as in Ned Vizzini's third book, "It's Kind of a Funny Story."

Furious, fast and wordy fun
December 5th, 2005 (Game Review)
From the creative mind of Reiner Knizia and Out of the Box Publishing, Inc. comes the fast-paced game of letter manipulation that puts English skills to the test.

Family Guy movie delivers the laughs
November 23rd, 2005 (Movie Review)
If you�re looking for a movie with good wholesome family fun, you are looking in the wrong place. Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story may very well be the raunchiest, funniest, and most politically incorrect animated 88 minutes in movie history.

Ruthless game of gold, greed, power
November 21st, 2005 (Game Review)
Finally there's a game that combines our love of gold with our love of nineteenth century mining. Face 2 Face Games presents Boomtown, and blowing up saloons has never been so much fun.

Sleepwriting
October 21st, 2005 (Senior Journal)
During senior year it seems like a great to-do list forms that includes all the step-by-step procedures we need to complete in order to get our diploma, get into college, and not be total failures in life.

Piles of homework from AP classes, college applications and essays, sports, and long work hours � most often from grueling minimum wage jobs � are just a few items on the list that seems to grow by the day.

Who speaks for Generation Y?
October 10th, 2005 (Opinion)
It�s easy to take whatever the media says about Generation Y as being factual. But what do those who are part of Generation Y, the ones who are on the front lines of adolescence, have to say about America�s youth culture?

Bristol bans cheating in school
September 19th, 2005 (News)
Bristol schools aren't putting up with students who cheat anymore. A new anti-cheating policy now in effect gives administrators the power to suspend students who cheat, plagiarize, or otherwise undermine the academic integrity of the Bristol schools.

A cheater's manual
September 19th, 2005 (Insider's Guide to High School)
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."
-- Groucho Marx

It's a well-known fact that cheating, while an extremely beneficial short-term solution, only hurts the well-meaning student in the long run. It's also against school policy.

That's why nobody should cheat.

There is, however, nothing wrong with "participating in a cooperative learning experience." It can boost grades and self-esteem with relatively little effort. So here are some helpful tips to making the most out of any cooperative learning experience...

Taking the college search to California
August 8th, 2005 (Travel Piece)
This is something I wrote on my trip to southern California to visit the colleges of CalArts, UCLA, and USC. You can also read my blog posts about the trip here.
One of the most prescribed pieces of advice when trying to choose a college is to visit the college itself in order to get an idea what the campus, dorms, and programs are like.

This is fine for local colleges or even colleges within the state. But it becomes much more of a problem when visiting colleges across the country--in my case, from Connecticut to California.

Trying to bring tolerance to Terryville
July 11th, 2005 (News)
This was a piece I wrote on Amnesty International's Campaign for Tolerance of bi, gay, lesbian, and transgender people at Terryville High School - one of the more controversial topics in recent times. I plan to write a follow-up article as the campaign continues into the 2005-2006 school year.

Gays are people, too - and with Amnesty International on a mission to spread the word, its student chapter at Terryville High School is launching a controversial tolerance campaign to crush discrimination...

'Hollow Men' fill a TV humor void
April 11th, 2005 (Television Review)
Ever since "Saturday Night Live" premiered on NBC in 1975, a host of other sketch comedy shows have been launched with mixed success. The most notable of these include Fox's "Mad TV" and Canada's "The Kids in the Hall."

Terryville High classes shedding students
December 6th, 2004 (News)
Something is amiss at Terryville High School.

Its classes run like clockwork, its teachers are on time and grades are promptly distributed.

But why are its classes shrinking?

Presidential promises fail to persuade
November 1st, 2004 (Opinion)
Written about a month (and then published several days) before the 2004 Presidential election.
Voting in the upcoming 2004 presidential election will probably be the most important political decision that people will have to make since, well, the last presidential election.

Find your own path
August 30th, 2004 (Insider's Guide to High School)
Want to know my own advice on getting through high school? Here it is.
At the beginning of the school year, it's only appropriate to take pity on the new incoming freshman, inexperienced, ill-prepared and hopelessly innocent--cannon fodder, if you will.