Our school had a monthly newspaper the journalism class would produce as a promotion for the academy. Although to take the class you had to be at least a freshman, that didn’t stop me from writing articles for fun and practice. One of my earliest stories was a feature on a new focus of science fair: multiple students from the school accidentally met up at the local library on the weekend while doing their science research. The article was one that jumpstarted my love for journalism and investigating original sides of stories others might overlook.
The story can be found on page six of the original web paper: October 2010 Newspaper
(Note: last names were taken out in the web version).
Deadlines force an unexpected meeting
Students cross paths at Pohick Library
by Jenneth Dyck, 8th grade
Apparently the library is the place to be on a Saturday afternoon. On Oct. 16, at Pohick Library, students accidentally converged together at the exact same time, all with the same quest: to research books for the science fair bibliography page.
“When I saw everybody from school, I thought, ‘Okay, this is weird, This is very weird,’” said Alexis, 6th grade, who was easily recognized by her bright blue Fairfax Patriots t-shirt.
“It was kind of cool,” said Susannah, 8th grade, who had come to the library to seek out books with her older sister. “I turned a corner and saw somebody I knew, then I turned another corner and saw another person I knew!”
Suzy, also 8th grade, had her own opinion for this unexpected meeting.
“I wasn’t really surprised to see people from school there since I see them there all the time,” she said.
Students kept bumping into each other in the reference section, and passing others sitting at the four-person tables obscured by books. The familiar orange packet of science fair rules and guidelines was hard to miss with its contents spilled out over the tables, with other personal belongings also littering the space.
“It was very hard looking for all my sources. There were like only two books on my topic!” Suzy said.
Susannah had a different view on the goal at hand.
“It was pretty easy to find the books I wanted. I just had to look on the catalog and it showed me where all the books on mag- netism were,” she said.
Spending an afternoon at the library working on homework can definitely have its surprises, and each student walked out that day with an armful of books on their science fair projects, and perhaps even a few books to read in their spare time.