Emily Watkins Portfoilo Semester 2

emily watkins

2016-2017

cover letter Dear Kinfolk Magazine,

My name is Emily Watkins, I am very interested in your organization, especially the position as an editor for the magazine. I am applying because I have worked on The Shadow yearbook and found it intriguing, I also found myself interested in the The Literary Magazine.

I am looking for a job that has to do with journalism and throughout the year, as I worked on the yearbook, I used your magazine as inspiration and as well referenced many ideas from your book. Therefore, I am driven in the direction of working at the Kinfolk company and using the skills I learned from working with the staff at Cactus Shadows.

Some skills I have learned working on The Shadow yearbook, is spending much time with InDesign and Edesign, they are great programs but also have many complications. These complications require patiences and the knowledge of the programs. I learned what to do and what not to do, to make the systems run faster, how to do use many of the tools in the systems, and tricks and hints that can make things on InDesign and Edesign to make things run smoothly. Furthermore, I have learned how to get good interviews and the rules and guidelines of taking good photos, and most importantly I learned how to follow a deadline.

Deadlines are not only important to yearbooks, but every kind journalism including: newspapers and magazines. I learned the importance of following the deadlines on a strict schedule and following the recommendations of the Editor in Chiefs. They has taught me many of the skills I learned from designing the yearbook, and would like to thank you for giving me the chance to learn from Kinfolk. Thank you.

Sincerely, Emily Watkins

resume

Headline My name is Emily Watkins, I am sixteen years old and attend Cactus Shadows High School. I am currently a Junior and recently finished my second year in The Shadow yearbook class as a team leader.

Objective The objective is to apply to Kinfolk magazine as an editor and learn new and exciting tools from them, while also including the skills I have learned being a yearbook staff member.

Experience My experience is helping in the creation of the 2015/2016 and the 2016/2017 yearbooks, and from it I have learned how to use InDesign and Edesign, and how to proper follow and portray a theme and message throughout a book.

Education I attend Cactus Shadows high school in the ccusd93 district and currently enrolled in my junior year of high school. I plan to attend college in Buffalo, New York or at Arizona State University and study journalism.

Activities/Awards I have participated in over two hundred hours of different activities at Boys and Girls Club. I also am part of the Quill and Scroll honors program that requires a 3.5 grade average.

self-analytical evaluation This year I have developed an entirely new set of skills and responsibilities, further allowing me to learn and understand a new part of the yearbook hierarchy. I ordinarily wanted to be the content editor or another editor that was in charge of more important design elements and played a more important role in the creation of the yearbook. But not even half way through the school year I learned that the team leaders are not only the most under appreciated members of the class but the most important. Without the team leaders there would be no content in the book, we find the stories and mods and further create them, the editors are just in charge of submitting the pages and making the book look pretty. Now that is important as well, I am not in any case hating on the editors, but they would not be able to do their jobs unless ours is complete.

Therefore this semester I have learned the leadership skills of running a team, the management and organization of keeping a team in line for deadline, and the process of creating a spread.

The production skill is completely based on organization and staying on top of things for me. For example in the first deadline, I fell into the habit of last year and waited to the last minute to complete my work, but in the end my pages we’re done and designed to the best they could, but it was much more stressful than it needed to be. As another example, deadline two, we had half the time to complete twice as many spreads. After learning from my previous mistakes I pulled my act together and had the most done out of the other teams on deadline night. Speaking of deadlines I learned what I learn everyday deadline night, I should start planning and getting interviews or “conversations� done in advance for a less stressful experience. After spending sixteen hours on deadline two I realized that I needed to take that much more seriously. Although I spent as much as time as I did, that deadline my team member Tess participated the best quality and effort into the information she presented. For example, in deadline one Tess was

afraid to do interviews by herself but after some word said, the team was unified and work got completed.

I feel journalism ethics are always important, I will not lie, I have tweaked interviews and stories before, but I try to remain honest in telling the truth. I mean, everyone has, but I always type interviews word for word and manipulate stories the best I can to suit the quotes. My overall reflection on myself would be pretty good, I have completely changed since last year and I believe for the better. I am more confident in myself and what I creativing, so that only benefits the yearbook. Although, I faced many problems, such as the difficulty creating my team so that we all work uniformly and together. From this I learned how to communicate so that everyone understands and I let my team members decide which stories and mods they want to do so they are more interested in what they are writing. My greatest weakness for publications will always be managing my time so that deadline night comes easily and is the least stressful it needs to be.

In order to overcome this weakness next semester and beyond that, the best way would be for a white board like Newspaper and allow for it to be seen by everyone what the plan is and who is in charge of getting that piece of work done.

Over the two years of participating in yearbook, I have not been proud of too much things I have created or done, I do not think much of it like that, more of a job well done or not. And that is based on pages as a whole. Therefore, the thing I am proudest of this semester, has been pages 116117. This is the spread that I believe not only show most of my design ideas and stories and mods.

Overall, on these pages I did the most, on pages 118-117, I did the spotlights about the different athletics events in track, I also took all the photos on the spread, and created th ejumping mod feturing Kaley Dodd. But I’ve got to say the proudest thing I did was the spotlight cutouts on this spread, it cause lots of problems, but it turned out clever, funny, and better than I expected.

The spotlight was very difficult to create because there was multiple people I was trying to incorperate into a small corner on the page. It was a prosess to get to the final state as well because orginally I wanted to get a picture of the entire track and have in circling the page with people running around it. But when thatidea failed multiple times I decided to take my camera down to the track and get a smaller piece of it to cut out and make it a smaller mod on the page. From there is was all about cutting people out and getting them interivewed in the different events they particapted in track. It was a fun and frustrating ecperience but I think it turned out cute and I wish it was a bigger piece of the spread.

reflection #2

before and after: the moments during photoshoots before the mess of me appears to screw up the photos.

problems of an ugly

1. be ugly 2. dab 3. make sudden movements that cause blurry photos 4. make stupid faces 5. annoy Korie 6. choke sam to death

being a pal with myself

from Arizona to New York pallen with the statue of liberty

pallen around

top sock

Trends come and go but even in the heat of summer my socks remain. It is a sight to see my toes, we have to be close for my toes to be shown. So find your pairs and join me in my top three socks.

from English to Lunch pallen to eat

pallen around with funny faces

day in the life With the alarm clock screaming at me to get up before the sun does, with the warm water trapping me in the shower, leaving me with five minutes to get dressed, closet contents everywhere but within, looking for an outfit that will end up not matching. With my shoes dangling in my hands as I run to the car to go pick up my boyfriend and his brother before we’re all late for school.

Fast forward to me running into school hoping to be on time to my least favorite class with Marri.

Here is where I helplessly finish my math homework as Marri stands over me yelling at me for making fun of his religion. As no grades ever go into the grade book so I yell back at him until the bell rings and dismisses me from my misery. Walking to my favorite class I stress about the book I need to get done, the spreads I need to finish and that will be completely changed to fit the design team’s idea for the book.

Otherwise known as not doing anything and doing it all deadline night.

Leaving this class, I trip over the same crack in the sidewalk I do daily and walk extremely slow to my math class where I will be reminded of how little I know. There, I barely get to start the math homework and half study for my vocabulary test for next block. I walk with Maddie to next block and talk to her about inappropriate things to make her uncomfortable. English, something I suck at because I cannot speak at all, so I stutter my way through that class, just so I can make it to lunch.

Running to my lunch table to throw my stuff down before I pee my pants, waiting for my friends to arrive so we can be typical white girls that go pee in a group. On the way to my fifth block my boyfriend

drags me as I complain how much I hate Carpenter.

I meet up with my lifeline in that class as we have a group hug to get us through the remainder of the day.

Here Carpenter gives another quiz with a new map and poster project to add onto the other work we have to do. Having to wait until almost the minute bells rings before my friends are packed up ready to go do some art. Walking into the classroom greeting Lang so she won’t be as cranky and give me a 100 on my crappy project I threw together.

Packing up fifteen minutes early so I can make it out to my car for a “track meet” before there is a herd of people trying to leave all at once. Keys in hand I speed walk past all the underclassmen taking the bus and walking slower than snails to cross the blue bridge where couples holding hands take up the entire walk way further delaying me. Speeding over the speed bumps hoping my car is not completely damaged just so I can go over the same bumps in half an hour on the way back to school for my Track and Field meet.

Here I spend more time waiting for my event than actually running, the long hours of heat exhaustion and exercise waiting to all be gained back in a couple hours as the entire team meets at Big Earl’s for dinner and sand volleyball. Which I have to leave early in order to make it to dance on time. Here I stretch and attempt to not embarrass myself with the new routine. Driving home at 10:00 stopping on my way to grab a energy drink to attempt and stay awake while I do my homework that I know I will rush to finish tomorrow morning. Later to find myself with an unwashed face, faced down in a school textbook done for the night. Then repeat.