Journalism is not your typical high school class, it is set up to resemble a real newspaper production.

     “We got to meet new people and grow from those people,” Brooks said. 

    Journalism has been a creative outlet for students here at Rose and those who become a part of the Rampant Lines family have truly enjoyed it.

      “The way I compost interviews now is the same way I did when I was a sophomore in high school,” Brooks said. 

     The students in Rampant Lines have been able to learn the correct way to format an article and conduct a formal interview. These skills learned in the very beginning are still being built on and used years later while writing for a larger scale publication. 

     “I realized I loved journalism so much because it was something I really enjoyed spending my time on,” former Co-Editor-in-Cheif William Becker. 

     Becker began taking journalism in 2018, his freshman year. He wrote for Rampant Lines all four years and a total of five semesters. While Becker was at Rose he wrote for entertainment, opinion and news. In 2021-22, his senior year, he was Co-Editor-In-Cheif.

     During his junior year, Becker decided journalism was something he wanted to continue past high school and is now attending Appalachian State University with a major in Journalism. He currently writes for the university’s newspaper called The Appalachian and he is a reporter for the news desk. The Appalachian publishes one print edition per month and an email newsletter to the students and faculty every Tuesday and Thursday, which makes it quite comparable to Rampant Lines.

    “I found my love for writing in middle school,” Brooks said. “After that, I came to Rose and was looking for classes that involved a lot of writing.”

     Brooks began taking journalism sophomore year and took it for a total of four semesters. Brooks started writing for entertainment and opinion during her first year, in her second year she was a news editor and then spent her last year as a features editor. 

      “I found journalism and realized I enjoyed features writing, I enjoyed the other sections too, but I knew features was where I wanted to be writing,” Brooks said.

     After graduating from Rose, Brooks went on to East Carolina University where she majors in communications with a concentration in journalism. While in high school, Brooks wrote an article for The North State Journal which placed second statewide through the North Carolina Press Association. This first article got her name out there and once she was in college they reached out again to see if she would be a good fit. She now writes one features article per week for them. 

     “Rampant Lines really was such a great thing to work for because it prepared me so well for this, not only because I realized journalism was something I loved, but it was a great preparatory step,” Becker said. 

     Becker has put out ten stories so far for The Appalachian and stays hard at work writing. He was offered a position this summer as a news clerk for a publication in Florida. Becker believes that he would not be able to have gone in so strong without Rampant Lines. 

     “[Ashley Hutchinson] really prepared me for this career more than I could have asked anyone to do for me,” Brooks said. 

     Both Becker and Brooks could not thank Rampant Lines or Hutchinson enough for the experience gained from their short but sweet years at Rose.  

     “I recommend every student at Rose to at least give [journalism] a try and see if it is a good fit for you because it ended up being exactly where I needed to be,” Brooks said.