Student Profiles

As tough assignments for journalists go, Sam’s was hard to beat. It was fall of his sophomore year, not long after he’d started covering sports for The Vanguard, the award-winning school newspaper. His editor had asked him to write a piece on the girls’ volleyball team, and as he began to fully grasp all that this would entail, his palms began to sweat. “The captain of the team was a senior who was also the most attractive girl in the school,” Sam recalls, “and I had to talk to her. It was extremely scary.”

Meeting journalistic challenges such as this has become routine for Sam since his sophomore English teacher, impressed with his writing, encouraged him to start writing for The Vanguard. After that, he says, “everything just took off.”

His work on the newspaper was also a big factor in building his confidence. Now he’s the editorials editor, writing four editorials each issue. Editorial writers are often called on to take positions about controversial topics, and Sam hasn’t shied away from that task. He’s written pieces that challenged school policies, explored disciplinary procedures, and asked tough questions about racial tolerance. He’s also written lighter pieces, including one about best and worst places to be on campus (ask him about the peculiarities of the main entrance to the Upper School). And undaunted by that initial volleyball assignment, he also continues to cover sports.

Sam, who plays bassoon in the school orchestra and captains the varsity tennis team, struggled a bit as a freshman, and credits his teachers for helping him find his stride in his classes and in his other pursuits. “It starts with the faculty,” he says. “They had faith that I would be able to pull it around.”