What’s behind the The Profile articles and podcasts you all indulge in? Our journalism class includes 12 wonderfully diverse students that include sophomores, juniors, and seniors. To understand the class, I need to speak about our main “contributors”, Nick Lockwood, Ms. De Paz, and all of us together.

Nick Lockwood

Behind the scenes, Nick is an energetic, creative, “special” person to quote Ms. De Paz. On multiple occasions, he has brought up the movement “Birds Aren’t Real”, speaking out about his “thoughts”, which just includes him mocking these people. 

One event when this happened was when the class was doing improv, and the prompt was a defendant and their client being questioned, in which Nick was the client and Ms. De Paz was his defendant. Nick was being charged with animal abuse and overall violence. He “ripped a pigeon apart to see if the bird was a robot”. Going along with that, there was another improv scene where Devin, another person in journalism, is trying to come out to their aunt, Nick. Devin was explaining how she was a lesbian (just the character), and Nick then confused “lesbian” to “lebanese”, and saying that you cannot change your race.

Among single events, such as an entire poster made to “Save Nick” from Ms. De Paz. He also cannot write in cursive, but he makes it up by his spontaneous dancing. He also has included stories about his unknown friend, where he explains that his friend got a moth lodged in their ear and it stayed there for hours. 

Nick is an entertaining person, most specifically his “Journalism Persona”, where in normal life, he might be different (I honestly don’t know, but maybe).

Ms. De Paz

Ms. De Paz is a teacher here at Horizon, and when she’s not threatening Nick, she is a chill, laid back person who does have and voice her opinions. Among her conversations, her boyfriend is mentioned commonly.

Her boyfriend is an infamous person among the journalism crew. She has told us many stories, one including her boyfriend drinking an Arizona tea and almost swallowing a wasp. He is also mentioned by his loud chewing during movies and shows, even to the point where Ms. De Paz had to venmo him money with a message telling him to stop. 

Another important thing to know is that she is a terrible driver. One story showing this is when Ms. De Paz kept on braking on a traffic-infused highway, and a woman was throwing pennies at her car, then yelling profanities through open car windows. She also has told us she hit her neighbors car they never used and never told the owners. Another story is her parking her car and slamming into a yellow rod trying to pull in. 

Music is also often discussed within our group, and she has voiced many times that she hates Billie Eilish and Halsey because she doesn’t enjoy “breathy” and “whiny” music, and for her description for “whiny” singers, she makes a sound I could only describe as a cat being struck by a truck. On the contrary, she enjoys dubstep, chill, and EDM, along with a small amount of country. She often shuffles playlists of Mac Miller and The Tesky Brothers. A week or two ago, she and some other people had a ten minute rant about Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish.

She is also claustrophobic, shown as she spoke about a time she needed to get into a small, confined space while she was moving, and she refused to go further than her shoulder. Semi-related, she also hates spiders, which wasn’t helped by a spider nest appearing on a windowsill in her house. Another single-event person that has been brought up is her sister, asking “Please send me money for starbucks”. 

Ms. De Paz is a fun teacher to have and an even better person to ask questions to (I’m looking at you, Nick).

Whole Class

Even if Ms. De Paz and Nick are our main contributors, we all contribute. One thing we talk about is conspiracy theories, one of which include the death of Elisa Lam, a girl that was found dead in a water tank above Cecil hotel. 

A few weeks ago, we all spoke about our weird spider/bee stories. Among the one told by Ms. De Paz, another story included catching a bee in a pupachino cup during a day at work. Related, we often ask questions to each other, like “what if a murder hornet came charging at you?”, where we all agreed we’d either scream, cry, or run, or a combination of them. 

Finally, some quotes/events out of context to give an idea of the crew: 

“The most ICONIC serial Killer”

“If someone disappears, I suspect Nick or Ms. De Paz”

“I swear if you take a starwars article from me, I will hurt you”

“The scariest game I’ve ever played is Luigi’s Mansion”

A person was also made fun of for liking Candy Buttons.

We also play group games, such as concentration, improv games, online scavenger hunts, etc. Journalism is a very demanding but rewarding class, and it’s my role to make sure everyone is having fun.