Gallery • 5 Photos

Photo: Angelica Palacios

IN MY ZONE. Senior Justin Esteban takes pictures for the TAJE Fall Fiesta Digital Photo Contest on Saturday, Oct. 7. Esteban later won excellent on his submission for the category “convention” and an honorable mention in the lines category. “It was an unexpected pay off for me, I wasn’t expecting to win one let alone two awards,” Esteban said. “But it made me happy knowing the last minute submissions worked out in the end. It was a fun experience to spend a weekend with the journalism people and it was great seeing other students and our program receive acknowledgement for the months of hard work they’ve put into their given talent.”

The Student Media staff traveled to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio for the Texas Association of Journalism Educators (TAJE) Fall Fiesta Contest Oct. 7-9, 2023.
“Any opportunity that you get to learn from other experts in the field is important to the development of teachers,” Commercial Photography Instructor Leigh Anne Treistman said. “It’s also important for the development of students and their learning, we get to go to contests while we’re there, and it’s an opportunity for students to see and hear from other experts in the field.”
Upon arrival at the convention center the students patiently waited as they were participating in fun activities before the contest to set the mood for the rest of the experience at TAJE.
“The prior thing before the contest where we were making friendship bracelets and listening to Taylor Swift and looking at stickers,” Student Media Staff’s Executive Editor senior Natalia Molina said. “Yeah, and then after that we competed, the first competition was two hours long and the first like hour, you sit in with the live interview and have to record (the interview).”
While students competed they were faced with many possible casualties and some nervousness.
“There was a Wi Fi problem, so it was very nerve wracking,” Molina said. “I was very paranoid. We can’t use our phones. I have to record with my laptop and I was very nervous that my audio wasn’t gonna pick up and so yeah, I was just thinking about all the things that could go wrong at that moment.”
The day after competing the staff members attended sessions that were administered by well known journalists like David Knight, Scott Winter, and Kel Lemons who have much knowledge on the topic of journalism and photography.
“It was fun because the information you learn you can bring back,” Student Media Staff’s Newspaper Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Cruz said. “We can bring it back here and use it in our own way.”
Even while doing all of these activities involving TAJE, the fun didn’t stop there. When the events ended the staff members were rewarded with free time to bond, become closer as a team and family.
“On Saturday after we went to the hotel rooms we went to eat then we walked around the Riverwalk and back to the hotel,” Molina said. “Sunday we went to go eat something and explore some more”
At the end of the event all the staff members were very grateful for their results. They took 2nd place in Yearbook, 5th place in Website, 6th place in Newspaper, and 3rd place overall sweepstakes.
“When you do good in this type of stuff it shows and it really showed when we won all those nice awards especially for yearbook.” Molina said.