Mass Academy alumni and former Brickyard Beat co-editors Isabella Palit and Riley Harn (class of ‘24) took the time to sit down with us and reflect on their experiences with the Brickyard Beat and how Mass Academy prepared them for college life. Harn is studying mechanical engineering at Villanova University, and Palit is studying biomedical engineering at Columbia University. Fun fact: although the Brickyard Beat was founded the year before Harn and Palit became co-editors, they were the ones who designed the website you’re reading this on now!

In their time as co-editors, Harn and Palit made the Brickyard Beat a more engaging outlet by including book reviews, videos, puzzles, and a LitMag, which allowed students to submit their art and writing to the newspaper. Harn stated, “Our overall vision was just to broaden it so that more people could be involved and contribute.” They also mentioned how, previously, articles had to be individually uploaded by Mrs. Taricco to the Mass Academy website, so they created a separate website for the Brickyard Beat, making it a more straightforward process. 

Both Palit and Harn joined the Brickyard Beat without any prior journalism experience, as the only way to get involved with sending schools’ publications was to take a class. Despite this, they successfully published the newspaper last year and wrote a multitude of articles during their time at the Brickyard Beat. This shows not only their extraordinary writing capabilities (which can still be found in previous years’ articles) but also the culture of the Brickyard Beat, which welcomes students of all writing backgrounds. Palit had previous experience writing poetry, and Harn wrote prose. Award-winning pieces from both writers can still be found in the LitMag section. 

Reflecting on her time at the Brickyard Beat, Harn said, “I think anytime you write, you just get better… I appreciated spending time interviewing people because now at college you have to interview for clubs and job internships, so it was cool to be doing the Brickyard Beat and being the interviewer, seeing that kind of experience.” 

Palit and Harn agreed their favorite articles to write were the senior profiles, in which they interviewed classmates about their SISPs and classes at WPI. Palit particularly enjoyed the SISP features because of how niche and creative some students’ projects were. She mentioned Lily Pattison, who was learning scrimshaw, the art of carving whale teeth to create designs (read more here). Harn commented, “I really liked hearing from people, not just knowing what somebody does in their free time, but talking to them directly about their SISPs, what classes they're interested in, and what they’re going to do after MAMS.” 

Later, the conversation shifted to reflections on college and Mass Academy. Palit attends Columbia and Harn Villanova, but last year, the Brickyard Beat ran features on their SISPs. Palit continued her research on fibroids from her STEM I project (read more here) over the summer, working with WPI students on MQPs based on her work. She hopes to finish writing a publishable paper in 2025.

Harn’s SISP involved exploring Massachusetts and posting her findings on a travel blog (read the blog) (read the Beat’s feature). Since arriving at Villanova, she hasn’t had too much time to explore Philadelphia, but she did have some reflections on her SISP, “I definitely think I appreciate like that I went out and like did all those things because I think I'm better at navigating public transportation and being comfortable to do things by myself.”

One thing that Palit and Harn emphasized about their respective schools is the emphasis on the humanities in a STEM education. Many schools, including Villanova and Columbia, structure their curriculum so that all students are required to take certain humanities classes regardless of major. Said Harn of Ancients, a required course at Villanova, “there's people in my class who are D1 athletes, there's people in the business school, the nursing school [...] people [...] so different from anybody that I had met before [...] and everybody really brings [...] a different perspective.”

To wrap up our interview, we asked Palit and Harn how they feel about MAMS now that they’re on the other side. Mass Academy expects a lot of its students, so it’s natural to wonder whether it will pay off. For Palit and Harn, the benefit is clear. As Harn told us, “I feel like Mass Academy is like the foundation of everything.” Harn spent this past summer on an internship developing software at MIT’s Lincoln Lab. Despite having no experience in software development, she remembers her time at MAMS giving her the confidence to figure out how to take on an unfamiliar project. 

Palit added to Harn’s statement, “it's really hard in the thick of it [...] to understand [...] how much you're getting from it, [...] but like now that I [...] finally graduated and left like Riley was saying [...] I mean like the classes are hard and there's like so much going on, but [...] you're so confident now [...] like I did MAMS junior year, I can do anything.” The gratitude that Palit and Harn feel toward MAMS is clear, and a great sign to anyone disillusioned by the quantity of work at Mass Academy. For a lot of people, the model works: if you put in the time to learn the content, you can develop the skills you need to be successful.