After building his reputation and his resume this year, senior Jalen Gomez reflects on his journalism experience with time management and what he has taken away from his time with the newspaper and broadcast programs.

Before this year, thee only co-curricular activity Gomez was in was DECA when he decided to join the programs while enrolled in Paige Hert’s journalism class during the 2017-2017 school year.

“I joined newspaper and broadcast because I was trying to get a feel for both of them,” Gomez said. “I also wanted to see if I had any potential in the clubs to continue on to a possible career.”

After Gomez joined these journalism programs for his senior year, he recently received the honor of Producer’s Choice at the journalism banquet and was given 2019’s Department Award for Arts, AV and Communication during the senior awards event on May 22.

Gomez will double major in journalism and sports management at the University of Houston and said that he will take with him the lessons that he has learned in high school journalism.

“I feel like being a part of journalistic programs in high school has really put me ahead of the curve in terms of being prepared for more real-life college experiences,” Gomez said. “Time management and skills needed with communicating with others and conducting interviews will definitely help me out in my career in the future.”

Being involved with CPHS News as well as academic and extracurricular activities, Gomez had to work his schedule to fit everything in.

“The only time management problems I had were with work and clubs,” Gomez said. “I was able to manage fun outside of school with clubs quite well and I was also able to have fun within the clubs.”

Gomez said there is just one thing he would change if he could flashback to freshman year.

“Going back, I just wish I was able to join these clubs sooner,” Gomez said. “Probably keeping them at those two as well because it would have been hard to handle anything else on my plate.” 

According to Gomez, the average broadcast and newspaper student conducts about 300 interviews throughout the year. With this comes connections and conversations with many students and faculty members.

“I think I’ve had an impact through the countless interviews with both staff members and students and I got to become buddies with multiple faculty members,” Gomez said. “I became with many more faces throughout the school in doing so.”

Spending every day in either Lab 7 or the broadcast room, Gomez has worked on written and video stories, conducting interviews and working with his fellow classmates.

“Being involved in this stuff has made me have to mature quite a bit because of how much responsibility and time comes with it,” Gomez said. “Also I think getting my face occasionally put up throughout the school or on The Wolfcast brought my clout up which is cool. Being exposed to a lot of these clubs helped net a lot of opportunities, and I wish I was able to get some of them earlier so I would definitely recommend to underclassmen to get involved in journalism as early as possible.”