Spring trips abound during break and beyond

As spring leads to summer, many students are using next week’s spring break and the week following for travel. The Wild Wild West history trip will take place over spring break, followed by two school trips for conferences. Additionally, many seniors will use the time to visit colleges.

Wild Wild West
A group of 21 students left today with history teacher Matt Torrens for Southeastern Utah to participate in a history-filled trip based on the Wild West.
The students will visit a Japanese relocation camp, the Butch Cassidy and Sundance kid hideout, and much more. The trip will also include many athletic components, such as mountain biking, rafting and hiking.
“I am stoked,” said junior Lisa Chang. “It is a week in the middle of nowhere where no one has been before and we’re going to be such mountain men and women. It will be stress-free and so much fun.”

Newspaper staff attends journalism conference
Thirteen members of both Falcon staffs will attend the annual Journalism Education Association conference in Anaheim, from April 17-20.
“I’ve gone to several of these conferences and the best one that I’ve ever gone to was in Anaheim,” said journalism adviser Michael Tyler. “I wouldn’t want to miss a journalism conference [there].”
The conference includes write-off competitions among the students in categories such as editorials, news, features, sports and photography. The paper will also be critiqued by professional journalists from around the country.
“The main thing for students is the opportunity to see that what they’re doing here is the same thing that other students at other high schools are doing across the country and kind of compare notes,” said Tyler.
Educational sessions focus on topics such as “How photography changed my life” and “Whipping a large newspaper staff into shape.” Like all trips to Anaheim, the students will visit Disneyland for an afternoon.
“The beauty of journalism conferences is that [they] get students together from [across the country] all in the same spot with some of the top people in scholastic journalism as well as professional journalism,” said Tyler.

Convention for Key Clubbers of Cali-Nev-Ha
Key Club members will travel to Sacramento to attend the Key Club District Convention, April 18-20,with students from California, Nevada and Hawaii. The members will elect new divisional officers and complete workshops to train new officers of the individual clubs.
“[By going], the members learn about Key Club through the workshops,” said senior Leslie Liao, Lieutenant Governor of the D12 division. “They experience it through the environment and they can participate in it by listening to caucus speeches.”
The conference also focuses on getting to know fellow members and meeting new people.
“There are spirit competitions where each division, which are divided sections of the district, is expected to show pride for their divisions,” said Liao. “Each division comes up by coming up with cheers and being loud. The best division gets the spirit stick.”

Seniors take on the college life
Many seniors will visit college campuses during and after break to get a feel for college life and how the campuses look before they must make a decision on where to enroll. Visiting college campuses is one of the last steps in the selection process for many seniors
“I’ll look at how the campus feels and [what my] first [is] reaction is, whether it’s a positive or a negative one,” said senior Kevin Chen. ◆