This was the best summer of my life! For five weeks, I attended a summer journalism program for high school students at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois near Chicago.

The title of this program was the National High School Institute, and although there were six different divisions of NHSI with 500 students, the journalism division only had 79 students. I lived in a dorm on Lake Michigan with a roommate (who was from Chicago) from June 26 to July 30, with classes usually from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and breaks in-between for meals.

We were able to become journalists, from interviewing people on the street to reporting news stories on television. For newspaper and magazine writing, we learned how to write editorials, leads, headlines, feature articles, news stories and how to improve our grammar. We had to edit our work several times and get our work critiqued by our instructor, who gave us constructive criticism on how to improve our work.

In the broadcast journalism classes, we were given news stories and had to memorize and report them live in front of a camera, just like they do on the news! We also had the opportunity to write news stories for television.

The instructors and guest lecturers were outstanding! We had the former president of NBC, a Chicago Tribune sports writer, as well as several television reporters speak to us.

The program was not all work though. Once a week we took field trips to Chicago. Some of the trips included going to baseball games, going on a tour of the Chicago Tribune building, have the Chicago Sun-Times editor speak to us, and taking a Chicago River boat tour.

Additionally, I had the opportunity to meet nice people and make new friends from across the country, since there were students from 28 states and Puerto Rico. I became friends with girls from San Jose, California and Louisville, Kentucky.

I cannot say enough about this program! I encourage all of you who will be juniors or seniors in high school next year and are interested in journalism to apply to this program. You will learn an unbelievable amount, make great friends, and have the best time! 

Review by L. M., Wells, VT