PA H !

January 1st may be the start of each year, but for students like us, autumn is the real beginning of things. We’ve all experienced the excitement and nervousness that comes with this fresh start. Not only do we have a whole host of classes and extracurriculars (and work and volunteering and side projects and friends and other random stuff– take your pick), each year brings something extra that we hadn’t expected to be doing.

For some of us, that unexpected thing was PAH! The Official AP Homeschoolers Student Newspaper. Over the summer, the first of us learned about this opportunity. I’ve always adored writing, and since I’d gotten involved with a lot of journalistic endeavours earlier in the year, the opportunity to create a newspaper immediately caught my enthusiasm. As every fresh journalist does, I applied for the editor-in-chief position. My acceptance letter had me bouncing in my seat, excited to start. 

Through early autumn, our staff grew as more students joined the team, and by mid-autumn, we had a staff of more than ten students. My first reaction to the size of our crew was “Whoa. We’re huge,” and my second thought was “We can do so many articles!” 

And we did. In this issue, we cover a wide variety of areas: debate topics and creative writing, photographs and factual essays, study tips and memes, and much more. Most of the articles come from our dedicated staff, but we’ve also compiled some excellent examples of student writing, submitted by the AP Homeschoolers student body. I loved getting to read and edit these contributions. Even more, I enjoyed the chance to meet everyone during our staff Zoom calls. During these calls, we brainstormed ideas, discussed formatting (should the creative writing submission topic have been a haiku?), and ironed out the bumps in our plans. 

It has been a fantastic experience to begin the school year with such a talented group. I’d also like to extend a HUGE shout-out to our supervisor, Mrs. Inspektor. I know they always say this, but it’s true this time: without her, none of this would have come together.

Finally, thanks to readers for taking the time to check out our publication! I hope that whatever unexpected things this school year brings for you, they’re as much fun as making a newspaper.

Luisa Ensslin, Editor-in-Chief

And for those of you who ARE interested in making a newspaper, you can apply to join the staff here. Although we aren’t currently taking on new members, we may be in the future, so it doesn’t hurt to put your application in anyway. Meanwhile, there are lots of opportunities to get your writing published by submitting work in response to specific prompts using our student submission form!